Was Andy Warhol racist?
 

I'll get back to you later, I have something else to do. Poll on the way.

Race war!

oh god.

i don't know. however, he was a good artist.

Andy Warhol wasn't racist, but he was obviously emo

Well, everyone's at least slightly racist, even if they won't admit it. So I suppose Andy Warhol was no different.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatently

Not as much as Hitler.

like someone mentioned, he was emo not racist.

some people say that Andy farmed out labor to Chinese peasants. he was making designer dresses that sold for hundreds while he was paying his slave children pennies.

nevermind....maybe that was Kathy Lee.

I have no idea

he probably was.

Maybe...but I bet he experiened plenty of good-to-honest Afro American cockage....then again, he was a voyeur rather than a participant - who knows? I'm not too sure if he was racist really, the only colour he really liked post- Valerie Solanas was green...

Probably not in the sense that most of us think of the term.

Why would you want to smear the good name of Andy Warhol, Mr. Porkapottoumus.

He was such a racist, he used bright colors except black as a complete canvas.

I don't know and I don't think that I really care enough, just curious.


Anyway, I have a book that that has a section that documents with words and pictures a trip of Warhola to the Bronx. All these black kids were being friendly to him and he was terrorized and wouldn't want to have anything to do with black people in the area.

I've also always found it odd that even though NYC certainly didn't have a shortage of gay black artists/activists in the 60's, the factory virtually had no blacks visiting it or forging artistic alliances in it.

Who knows, maybe he wasn't a racist at all.

I think your point about the Factory being largely white says more about racial divides within certain scenes than it does about individuals. Lester Bangs wrote a rather smug, but no less interesting article about the underlying racism in the 70s NY punk scene. Most scenes are a bit racist in one way or another.

Saying that, Warhol always came across to me as a deeply conservative person and so it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he harboured certain racial prejudices above and beyond those of his circle. Not racist in the gas the fuckers kind of a way, more, "ooohhh, I dunno, they're just so weird and kinda scary" sort of a way. Also, it's difficult to judge people from the past's racism by today's standards. Otherwise my dear old nan would be up for a Nuremberg hearing. Different values for a different age, and all that.

He was from Pittsburgh, Pa.
This fact is totally irrelevant.

I don't think of myself as racist, I've lived a black person, had consensual sex with a black person, and just happily voted for a black candidate for president. However, if you got me as hopped up on as much speed as they used to take in the Factory and took me on a walk through the Bronx in the '70s I'm pretty sure I'd be tweaked and paranoid to no end too.

Which isn't to say that he couldn't have been racist. It's just that using an anecdote about being a skinny little fairy fried on speed in a notorious ghetto, so scared that he didn't notice the residents found him interesting in a less than threatening way, isn't much proof.

I voted "Can't Tell" in the poll, because who can ever tell what the fuck Warhol was really thinking?

oh really?