Toothpaste and tampons designed with your skin color “in mind.” MultiCult Classics says:
OK, Pantene offers products designed with Black women in mind. But Crest, Always and Tampax?
Also, apparently the black that is beautiful is light-skinned, with supposedly “European” facial features. See also: black models that don’t look black.
UPDATE: In the comments, Brian asked what I mean by “reification.” Thanks for the question, Brian! I mean “treating an abstraction as if it were real.” And, yep, race isn’t real. See racial categories as a historical artifact and check out this great website by the American Anthropological Association.
As I re-read… the contradiction between the two last paragraphs (black models that look white and there’s no such thing as black and white) is awesomely reflective of the reality of its race and its simultaneous non-reality!
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Comments 5
Alicia T. — April 18, 2008
Because we all know that the teeth and vaginas (and vagina dentata?) of black women are completely different from the teeth and vaginas of white women. What a joke.
Brian Dunbar — April 18, 2008
"The reification of race"
I was a bit taken aback - I've only used 'reification' in the comp-sci meaning of the word - to take an abstract concept and make it into a data model.
Which surely isn't what you're meaning here. So I looked it up - and I'm more confused.
Which meaning of reification did you intend?
Treating an abstraction as if it were real? So .. race is an abstraction and it's not real?
The gestalt psych meaning - having more spatial info than is really present in the stimulus?
Or did you mean the Marxist cant usage of the word?
kezdro — April 18, 2008
I think it might be more accurate to say that while race is real, it is (to use the verbiage of personality research) a trait, not a type. That is, it's continuously variable, not categorical (in reality, if not perception).
Vee the Monsoon — April 19, 2008
Race is a social construction. That doesn't mean it's not real--as in a real lived experience. A house is constructed. Is it not real?
jimmy — December 18, 2009
Did anyone else notice that these items are for sale at Family Dollar? Apparently that is where black people shop.