Jezebel: casual racism

Using A Woman Of Color As The "Background" In A Photo Shoot: It's Not Okay

Dodai — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:40:00 EDT

A couple of days ago, a post titled "Background Color" appeared on Racialicious. The jumping-off point is a photograph, by Alex Hoerner, from Nylon magazine (at left), in which Beth Ditto from The Gossip is playing cards with the housekeeper in a motel. And yeah, the housekeeper is a woman of color. The post's author, Mimi, writes: "In the story that coalesces for me, studying this photograph, she has just been forced to play cards with a guest — not because she wants to, but because she could lose her job if she doesn’t. Nor does the game even feel like a break from her domestic labor; this sort of affective labor is no less taxing. In her mind (in the story I imagine about this editorial), she calculates how much longer she’ll have to stay and clean in order to meet her day’s quota."

Nylon positions itself as edgy and fashionable. Are we to assume that taking advantage of the help is all the rage? It's like, "OMG, I was so bored I played gin with the maid. "Mimi continues:

We are not meant to consider her story. (And I’m made uncomfortable by my own attempt to "give" her an interior life.) Instead, the woman of color in her drab housekeeper’s uniform is simply another part of the furnishing in this bland motel room. She is banished as mere and muted background, the better to illuminate Ditto’s extraordinary excess of shine and glamor.

The thing about using people of color as props or background is that it's not only offensive, it is so damn old. Colonialism, slavery, movies in which the maid, porter or chambermaid has no lines — we've seen it all a million times. The lady of leisure as compared to the hard-working woman. Haven't we made any progress? How come no one cares when a company like Free People shoots in India using a blonde as the star and relegating cows, camels, elephants and indigenous schoolchildren to props or background? By using a non-white person as a backdrop against which the white person is supposed to shine, a photographer creates a world in which one person has more value than another. Clearly, the paid model (or, in Nylon's case, the celebrity) is the "star," but if you can only see her light by diminishing those around her, how bright can it be?

Background Color [Racialicious]

Earlier: Free People: Someone Watched The Darjeeling Limited Before Booking This Photo Shoot

ObamaMonkey Manufacturers Saddened By The Discrimination Against Them

Megan — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:45:00 EDT

Not long after SockObama Co. founders David and Elizabeth Lawson (of West Jordan, Utah) took down their website and apologized for offending people with their toy portraying Barack Obama as a monkey, it turns out they actually have more to say and they'll be damned if us liberal blogospheric discriminators are going to keep them from saying it.

In the good ol' fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism ; free enterprise has been censored, and TheSockObama politically plush toy has been discriminated against in the marketplace of the United States of America.

Also, by the way, we're hypocrites for saying Bush looks like a primate but noting the long, racist history of referring to black people that way and taking offense at a toy based on it. And we're bullies who swore at them over e-mail and made them issue refunds and stop mass-marketing their toy which they were just trying to live the American dream by manufacturing. This isn't the America they want to live in, people, where struggling white entrepreneurs in Utah can't be quietly allowed to mass market their racially-charged and offensive toys to racists the world over without being called out on it by hypocritical, bullying liberals who hate American and Free Enterprise. I'm cool with them not living here, actually. Anyone else? [Salt Lake Tribune]

The SockObama Might Die, But Racism Will Live 'Til November (At Least)

Megan — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:50:00 EDT

TheSockObama Company, about whom we wrote last week, has run away with its tail between its legs. On its no-longer-fuctional website, the gentlemen who once wrote, "We wonder now if this might be a great opportunity to take this moment to really try and transcend still existing racial biases," when people complained that their ObamaMonkey might be ever-so-slightly offensive have issued an apology. It says, "We are very apologetic to all who were upset by our toy idea. We will not be proceeding with the manufacturing of this toy. Thank you." We're guessing that when they got that order for a full gross from Ron Edwards they might've finally gotten what the rest of us were saying. [The SockObama, Southern Poverty Law Center]

ObamaMonkey? There Is No Teachable Moment With Some People.

Megan — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:00:00 EDT

As if there hasn't been enough coverage of how using images of monkeys to represent the first African-American Presidential candidate from one of the two main parties is unwarranted and incredibly racist, there's a new company marketing a new Obama-monkey product. TheSockObama Co. is marketing this toy via its website that we're not going to link to. In response to inquiries from plenty of people about what kind of scum-sucking, race-baiting, Neo Nazi company they are, they responded:

We simply made a casual and affectionate observation one night, and a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little. We wonder now if this might be a great opportunity to take this moment to really try and transcend still existing racial biases. We think that if we can do this together, maybe it will behoove us a nation and maybe we'll even begin to truly communicate with one another more tenderly, more real even.

A charge, then, to journalists: Please photograph every single person at the Republican National Convention sporting that shirt or carrying this doll. It's time that we know their faces so that we might shun these people. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, New York Magazine]