Odd, that I’d be the one to simplify an issue, but considering that the art itself seems to be at least halfway well-done, then I’m going to call some form of racism by the fact that it (as of the moment) has 21 downvotes. It’d be one thing if it were poorly done.
…It’s not.
Do people really think the art or even the concept merits that many downvotes? Is it so bad that Fluttershy is probably Indian (I don’t think Muslim is right here) or that Twilight is likely black? Heck, like my vote, the bulk of the upvotes are probably just to counteract the downvotes.
One form of it is the fact that bronies (people in Web Culture, actually) aren’t usually involved in the humanities or the social sciences. We are often white males with a tendency for the sciences. We tend to be liberally-bent, and a little edgy. Certainly brash. But not conducive to the "fluff" that is admittedly in some humanities. If I were to seek a community that was about raising taxes to help oppressed people, then this would not be the population I would turn to. Such fields have merit that a lot of people in Web Culture don’t see, because such issues have been oversimplified or otherwise minimalized.
Women’s studies and sociology are probably seen as a waste of time or invalid logically. Some people can see the intricacies of some fields, but see interactions with people as being somewhat simplistic in comparison. In actuality, people are far more complex in that they don’t follow the same logic and they don’t weigh things in the same ways.
…Your stereotypical person in Web Culture doesn’t understand that and they honestly don’t care to, because they don’t have to deal with many black people as black people IRL. They’ll marry a kinda geeky to very geeky white girl, perhaps Asian, Most of their friends will have similar likes as them, and there aren’t many black people who are interested in Friendship is Magic, Doctor Who, Minecraft, and TF2.
As such, bronies don’t have to understand race in any detailed way in order to make their way through life. In my two plus years in lurking and interacting with the fandom, this is what I’ve found. Other "groups" of people (based upon activities and interests) tend to be more informed and be more interested in matters of race. I don’t consider it to be antagonistic or malinentioned. Bronies aren’t bad people. Generally, they’re as good as anyone else. I consider most of their takes on race to be overly simplistic.
Saying all that to say that such a mindset doesn’t predict a good score for such art. There are those who troll to get a response from those who are commenting now (probably make up some of the downvotes), those who do comment, and those who stay silent (in comment and in vote), lurk, and never get involved. Among those people and the distribution of these people, this score isn’t surprising, but it’s still a bit disappointing. It wouldn’t matter if it was Megasweet, tlm02, or a lesser known humanization fan artist, making Twilight black or Fluttershy Indian in any serious way bodes poorly for the art’s reception.
tl;dr: Bronies are a little ignorant in regards to race, but they don’t know it. That’s not their bent academically or intellectually.
I can appreciate Lefty643’s honesty, and his opinion is his own, but maybe I frown even more, because he’s being honest. And I don’t think his opinion is his unique here.
Lefty?
You see this massive wall of text of mine.
…should I be colored white in art? I can’t imagine that I appear to be like the stereotypical black person.
Just like a fraction of fanart portrays a humanized Twilight as being black, a fraction of black people really do act, put bluntly, white. Therefore, it follows that a similar fraction of black Twilight humanizations are valid, because a fraction of black people act like Twilight in the canon.
Your opinion might make more sense to me if it acknowledged that fact, but your generalization here doesn’t merit your downvote. I hope you see that.
I don’t fault you for not liking the way a black character looks. Heck, maybe you don’t like the way Fluttershy looks with dark skin and pink hair.
But I upvote and downvote based on execution and concept. If not for the massive amount of dowvotes, I wouldn’t have even bothered to vote at all. I don’t downvote BBW art even though I don’t like it. I just hide it. (Which is why I’m really glad that there’s a Favorite option now. I Favorite images based more on whether or not I like it more than whether or not I think the artist did a good job in their creating a concept or executing a concept.)
I don’t want to punish the artist for a personal preference of mine.
(Also, you can probably hide the art if you change your settings a bit. I can put whatever I want for my hiding/spoilering/visible tags by turning off the "fancy tag" settings. Let’s me punch whatever the crap I want in. Even tags that aren’t there yet.)
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Lord Niggertron does nothing to help. I wish he’d go away, "but Internet." What can you do with an notorious RPing user who’s not breaking any rules? He has a negative effect on the userbase, but it’s beyond what Derpibooru is responsible for in terms of its mission and moderation. He’s not preventing the site from hosting fanart (and bad macros and forced memes), and he’s not stirring up dissension in the userbase. It ain’t their problem, and they’d be a bit biased to ban based reasoning outside of the mission of the site.
It’s too bad his flamboyant and rather ignorant confidence combined with something almost resembling redeeming value in terms of humor actually makes people respect his words, if not agree with them. He sorta plays at reverse psychology in how he appears flippant at first and then oddly "articulate" in regards to his opinion on matters of race.
Basically, he’s Carlos Mencia by another name (a pony name, no less,) and it works here.
At the end of the day, it’s probably some white guy RPing as a "black" pony or white guy using the guise of a ponysona to push off his ideals of what is fine and what is not about racism, and the Internet is conducive to his means. It sorta grinds me that your opinion about my race is where a lot of Western people are getting their first true philosophy on race beyond "we’re all equal, period." You’re not trained in the area, either academically or by expertise. You’re simply applying your narrowly-based logic to a situation you have no idea about (and should you actually be black, then assume I would be audibly laughing, because I would be.)
As a black guy, I regret ever having made your acquaintance. Your reputation and interaction with dozens here (and probably hundreds, if not thousands more) does more to perpetuate racism against black people than you can ever be aware of. All for the sake of your jollies. However, "because Internet" and the nature of most people in Web Culture, there’s nothing that can be done about it. You have manipulated the pond’s composition perfectly well.
I saw it fit to call you out on that. For this population, I argue that you do far worse things in regards to how people see blacks than BET does. Bronies recognize that BET isn’t indicative of all black people, but they’ll give you some credence based on the attributes you chose for your ponysona’s personality and the venue in which we interact.
I look forward to a similar function that was made for Ponibooru where I can filter out your comments.
God bless you, sir, but please stop talking like you know about issues of race. I promise that you don’t.
Not because you’re likely white, but because of what you’re saying.
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The fact that this is even an issue of conversation is a good thing, but it may not even be all that much of an issue.
You might have gotten a bored troll who wanted to vote this up a lot with different accounts or something, or you might have gotten a few people who dislike this purely on subjective (or poorly informed objective grounds a la Lefty’s) explanations.
As soon as an image or post with any level of controversy to it gets so many downvotes on most sites, it sorta gets into a "karma spiral of doom," where people see the score and begin to incorporate the current score into how they perceive the art. The art by itself for some isn’t enough to merit a downvote, but upon noticing the score, they begin to look for small attributes and general feelings in order to make sense of the score. Upon doing so, they become more likely to give the art a score that follows the current score. And so, you have a spiral outside of the pure matter of the art without the score.
A slightly more complex version of bandwagoning, so to speak.
For most, it might not even really be a matter of race at all. Might just be following the herd LAWLZ BRONEI PUNS.
tl;dr: I’m not naive enough to think that you read anything here that wasn’t in bold but it makes me feel better because I have to make sense of the situation without feeling bad about my fandom or myself OK GOSH.
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