Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnnyB
After all you wrote, did you not notice the font here? Much more culturally sensitive.
Also, Chris Farley is clearly representing ninjas as positive heroes here, whereas those guys were representing ninjas as ######bag realtors.
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I won't judge whether or not someone should be offended, or whether or not the realtor ad is racist. Something doesn't need to be racist to be offensive either. I suspect these guys were being ignorant and didn't understand that this could be a culturally sensitive or provocative thing. Ninja lore has been adopted of the cultural zeitgeist in the Western world, but the lore itself is mostly fictional.
I have Japanese in-laws and they are very relaxed about their views, but that doesn't mean everyone is, or should be. I asked my sister-in-law before if associating ninjas with Japanese was racist, and she didn't feel it was. But she told me that the idea of ninjas as heroes was a Western fabrication. She said in Japanese culture, ninjas are regarded as degenerates that were assassins who killed without honor. They were apparently recruited from lower classes to do the work that was considered beneath the upper class rulers. They were basically hired hitmen and not noble or worthy of high regard.