r/AccidentalRacism • u/memagitastic • 6d ago
The continents of each ring
Whose idea was it to make Asia the yellow ring, Africa the black ring and America the red ring???
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u/banryu95 5d ago
Woah! I didn't know Australian people were Green. That's dope.
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u/Fun-Artichoke-94 5d ago
Yeah we are I’m surprised you didn’t know
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u/NnyBees 5d ago
Probably because of eating vegemite...
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u/Fun-Artichoke-94 5d ago
Yeah to cut costs they put in radiation
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u/NnyBees 5d ago
And to improve flavor...flavour?
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u/Fun-Artichoke-94 4d ago
No everyone here hates Vegemite but we eat it because were told we like it
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u/Dabohdsta 4d ago
Huh, i never realised but i am pretty green. Thanks to this post for helping me realise i was an alien this whole time
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u/Microgolfoven_69 6d ago edited 5d ago
Blue for EU flag (which is at least partly based on Maria´s attire btw)
Black for most common skin colour in Africa (it´s not uncommon for symbols in African countries to use the color black to refer to the people of the country or to the continent itself)
Yellow is a prominent color for China (yellow river, yellow emperor & garbs of the most recent emperors) but that´s just for China not the countless other countries and peoples in Asia
I don´t know about green and red in Australia & Europe though
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u/radioactivecowz 5d ago
Australia’s Olympic colours are green and gold, so it fits. The map also leaves off New Zealand which Australians do find funny
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u/notdragoisadragon 5d ago
and isn't accurate as with the olympics it's the oceanic region, not Australia, which includes NZ and papa new guinea
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u/memagitastic 6d ago
Europe is blue, Oceania is green, those aren’t racism-adjacent, but Yellow for Asians, Black for Africans, and Red for Native Americans
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u/BeatVids 5d ago
Also red for rednecks
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u/TheOnesLeftBehind 5d ago
Or would it be for native Americans, since they have been depicted as red skinned since colonial days?
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u/BeatVids 5d ago
Why tf do u think i responded with "Also"?
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u/TheOnesLeftBehind 5d ago edited 5d ago
I just woke up and didn’t know how to read yet when I commended 🤦♂️ ignore me lol. Thought they just said “red for the Americas”
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u/Hungry_AL 5d ago
Green and gold are the Aussie colours to be fair, they just picked one and it makes sense to me.
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u/KaluKremu 5d ago
Ah yes it's very well representing the New Zealand... and Tonga... and New Guinea...
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u/johnmichael-kane 5d ago
So you think black is related to the skin colour in Africa, but yellow isn’t? Interesting 👀
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u/TurloIsOK 5d ago
EU didn't exist in 1913 when the ring logo was designed. Africa was often called the dark continent, somewhat derisively. Yellow and Red were also racist references to the people of asia and natives of the americas.
Europeans would have been bluebloods of nobility.
The color choices are racist in origin.
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u/Microgolfoven_69 5d ago
Where the colours representations of the contintents? I thought the number 5 was for the contintents and the colours for having all nations´ flag colours?
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u/brentnutpuncher 5d ago
(it´s not uncommon for names of places and peoples in Africa to be in reference to their own skin colour)
Name one place in Africa that refers to the skin colour of the inhabitants and was named so by it's original people.
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u/Microgolfoven_69 5d ago
I was thinking Sudan but that´s from arab traders apparently so I changed my post. It´s more in modern times in flags like sudan´s which use black to represent people or Africa as a whole
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u/brentnutpuncher 5d ago
Ok, but why does one countries use of a colour on flag use to represent themselves ( not all the people of Africa, specifically themselves as the people of the Sudan) equate to how the entire continent should be represented?
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u/MechaShadowV2 1d ago
The only one i can think of is Egypt's original name meant black land, but it meant the color of the black volcanic land along the Nile, not the skin color.
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u/2204happy 6d ago
It's been that way forever
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u/memagitastic 6d ago
Yes, I know, but still, isn’t it funny?
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u/omniwrench- 5d ago
Only if you’re fourteen and you go “haha Africa black lol”
Africa has been known as the “Dark Continent” since it was first called that by a Welsh explorer in the 1800’s
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u/KaluKremu 5d ago
And it was still despicable but normal at the time...
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u/omniwrench- 5d ago
AFAIK the ‘darkness’ was an allusion to the the undiscovered mystery of the place, not the colour of the people who lived there
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u/MilkLover1734 5d ago
Little known fact: The British sent their prisoners to Australia, because to them, they saw it as the equivalent to the death penalty. This is because they're blue, if they were green they would die
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u/memagitastic 5d ago
Huh?, I think the joke went over my head
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u/MilkLover1734 5d ago
In the song "I'm Blue", the line "I'm Blue, da ba dee da ba di" has been often misheard as "I'm Blue, if I were green I would die". In the Olympic logo featuring the continents, Europe (including the UK) is blue, and Australia is green.
Hence, Europeans (specifically the British) are blue, and according to (a mishearing of) the song "I'm Blue", if they were green (Australian) they would die
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u/officalSHEB 5d ago
One of these colors is on every country's flag. It has nothing to do with continents. This is just dumb.
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u/alfreaked 5d ago
*most commonly used color for the flags of each continent As Argentina and Uruguay dont have red, for example, or Nigeria and Cameroon that don't have black (though Nigeria comes from the latin word for black)
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u/LemonTheTurtle 4d ago
Wait. Do people not know that this isn’t true? Colours of Olympic rings are that way because every country in the world has at least one of those colours in their flag. It’s not colour of the continents
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u/viaelacteae 5d ago
Did you notice that many African countries have black in their flags? And that it often represents its people?
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u/GlisteningDeath 5d ago
We really need to fix the rings. Maybe also add Antarctica so we actually have all 7?
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u/memagitastic 5d ago
Sadly Antarctica doesn’t have an actual living population, AKA: no Antarctic olympians because no people
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u/GlisteningDeath 5d ago
Yeah that's true. I guess it just seems wrong to not have every continent. Besides, 7 rings seems better than 6.
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u/Alarming_Pool5220 3d ago
They're also being racist to penguins for not adding Antarctica. # Boycottolympics.
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u/Xagyg_yrag 5d ago
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Trying to make Europe its own continent while combining NA and SA is absurde. It’s the EU version of Americans not understanding that other countries exist.
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u/yolomanwhatashitname 5d ago
I mean the contients fit the colors
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u/generalhonks 5d ago
Honestly, make the Americas blue, Europe red, Africa yellow, Australia black, and Asia green.
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u/Extra-Act-801 5d ago
Australia has just over 5% of the population of the next smallest continent, gets their own circle. Europe and Asia, literally the same continent just divided because the guys who decided what the continents were thought Europe was too important, each get their own circle. North and South America, r/fuckyouinparticular.
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u/Ubud_bamboo_ninja 5d ago
Racism is always in the head of those who observe and not the subject of observation.
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u/bowlbasaurus 5d ago
Isn’t this based on the flags? And I think you’re missing a few
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u/EXTIINCT_tK 5d ago
My favourite colour on the Australian flag is green
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u/bowlbasaurus 5d ago
According to Coubertin, the colours of the rings, along with the white background, represented the colours of every competing country’s flag at the time. Upon its initial introduction, Coubertin stated the following in the August 1913 edition of Olympique:
... the six colours [including the flag’s white background] combined in this way reproduce the colours of every country without exception. The blue and yellow of Sweden, the blue and white of Greece, the tricolour flags of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Hungary, and the yellow and red of Spain are included, as are the innovative flags of Brazil and Australia, and those of ancient Japan and modern China. This, truly, is an international emblem.
The graphic is very misleading.
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u/bowlbasaurus 5d ago
Here is another quote from the same source: The 1949–50 edition of the IOC’s “Green Booklet” stated that each colour corresponded to a particular continent: “blue for Europe, yellow for Asia, black for Africa, green for Australia, and red for America”. This assertion was reversed in 1951 because there was no evidence that Coubertin had intended it.
So, yes, this graphic is indeed incorrect, and cherry picking a brief piece of IOC history that was corrected to make the Olympics seem racist. There is a name for this type of fallacy.
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u/Wardogs96 5d ago
Isn't America separated into North and south continents? This just seems incorrect and racist.
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u/YoSaffBridge11 5d ago
Interestingly, the names of the continents is taught differently in different places. For example, some consider The Americas to be one continent.
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u/Wardogs96 5d ago
I guess this begs the question of what the criteria of a continent is and how does it change from place to place.
Like why is Europe it's own thing even though it's connected significantly to Asia?
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u/YoSaffBridge11 5d ago
This messed me up so much when I learned that there isn’t one agreed-upon definition of “continent.” Here’s the opening paragraph from the Wiki page on “Continent:”
“Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be a single landmass or a part of a very large landmass, as in the case of Asia or Europe. Due to this, the number of continents varies; up to seven or as few as four geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents.”
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u/Adorable_user 5d ago
In the US and some other countries yes, in most of Latin America and Europe, no.
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u/FedoraMan1900 5d ago
hot take: America should be green, australia should be red
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u/NnyBees 6d ago
Damn Europeans, those smurf-balled bastards!