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Grrl Power #1098 - Operant education
🕑 Added 2022-11-03 10:00:05 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
Looking at this page just before I publish it, I realize that I did a poor job of introducing "Lioness." You can see her in the last panel of the previous page, but the way this page plays out, I could see people thinking that Dabbler had changed into the dark skinned lady in panel 3 and then changed again in panel 6. Panel 7 and 8 should dispel that misconception, but it probably could have been laid out a little more clearly.
I expect there will be some debate in the comments about the blackface question posed in panel 4. Sydney, like many white people, is afflicted with the occasional bout of white guilt, which is why she's checking in. Even Anvil has to give it a little thought, but as you can see, her litmus is whether or not it's mocking. My personal thoughts are that yeah, if you're white, (or at least, not black - the fact that Dabbler isn't white doesn't absolve her of anything here) you have to be careful with "cosplaying as a black person" because of many many past wrongs, but I don't think it's automatically bad. I think we're at a point where we might be over-correcting, and any instance of this is instantly decried, but I think that's as much about reflexive white-guilt than anything.
For instance, Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder was perfectly acceptable (IMO) because it was a self-aware bit about an actor getting way too deep in a role, and it wasn't about mocking black people nor did it cost an actual black actor a role. The bit wouldn't have worked if it had been a black actor pretending to be a white actor pretending to be a black character, and then they white face him at the end of the movie for the "de-makeuping." I guess there could have been some amusing extra level of meta-ness if they had done that, but I think most of the jokes wouldn't have landed with the same impact then.
Dabbler is simply attempting to come up with a disguise that allows her to blend in with local domestic ethnicities, and Senegal is like 0.3% white. It's not like she couldn't do surveillance in white face, but the only way she'd draw more attention would be to go with lavender-with-green-stripes face. Anyway, it's not like she can't duck into a restroom and totally change her appearance whenever she wants. By the way, Dabbler can change her eye colors with her glamor if she wants, but she usually doesn't, especially if she knows she won't be under intense scrutiny.
The "Lu?" in panel 7 is my attempt at Wolof. Honestly I had never heard of the language before I started writing this page, and the online Wolof translators/dictionaries I found seemed... underdeveloped. Basically I couldn't find a definitive translation for "What?" into Wolof. I found a few example sentences that had the word "what" in them, but in the Wolof translation, the word was different depending on the sentence. In some cases it was "Lu" and in others it was "Lan" or "Looy." So basically, Lioness is supposed to be saying "What?" in Wolof, but there's like a 65% chance she isn't. Just pretend.
Comments
Thisguy
I'm a pale white guy, so I have little to no concept of what is offensive beyond almost everything that white men say these days... Anyway. Not sure how offensive it would be for a non-human to disguise themselves as... well, any human. Back whuite or other. Why would it be more or less offensive for any non-human to disguise themselves as a vblack person than a white person? I suspect that if we ever meet aliens, our definition on what is offensive would have to change drastically. We'd have to look at intent, not just the act. But in any case, currently being fictional, not something we need to worry about immediately.
eddi_TBH
It's a double disguise. Dabbler is posing as an African-human.
