Recently I saw this wood sign for sale in a catalog (available here, if you really want one):

Looking around online I found this t-shirt here, which combines the “My Indian name is” element with a twist on “kicks like a girl”:

I have seen things like this before, and they always irritate me (and I blame the movie “Dances with Wolves” for the whole “Indian names always follow the pattern ‘Present-Tense Singular Verb + With + Noun'” idea). There’s an element of othering here–the idea that American Indian names are funny or weird. Part of what I think is considered funny is that the names are presumably tied to actual activities or things (for example, Mankiller or Redbird). Of course, many European surnames originated the same way (for instance, “Smith” was a surname often used to indicate the person was a blacksmith, silversmith, etc.), but they now hold the status of “normal” surnames that are unremarkable (although Smith has become somewhat remarkable as a symbol of White non-ethnic normality, such that it is often used in movies and TV shows as an alias by spies and others wishing to avoid attention).

That website led me to this one, where there were lots of “Native American” t-shirts. As far as I can tell, it’s not a Native-owned company, it’s just a bunch of shirts with Native people or themes on them. Some, like these, associate American Indians with animals:

Whereas the t-shirts with men on them tend to show them in battle or hunting, those with women generally have romanticized, sometimes vaguely sexualized images. I noticed several have a common element: the upturned face, often with closed eyes, as well as stereotypically “Caucasian” features, except with darker skin and hair. This one is called “Purity”:

You might use these in a discussion of representations of Native Americans, particularly how they continue to be worn as symbols by other groups. The things associated with American Indians–wildlife (particularly wolves), nature, and the warrior tradition–tend to romanticize their connection to the natural environment and even portray them as part of nature themselves, able to communicate with the other “wild things.”

It’s a weird double bind: on the one hand, presumably American Indians are more “noble” than other groups–surely they wouldn’t have driven wolves, bald eagles, and bison to the verge of extinction, given their close connection to nature. But at the same time, they are depicted as relics of the past, brave fighters from the glory days. American Indians who drive cars and wear t-shirts and blue jeans (and have last names like Smith and Thomas) don’t have a place in our romanticized images of Native groups.

NEW! D. Cho sent in three more t-shirts that draw on Native American icons or images. Here is Spirit Happy Fox:

Chief Many Feathers:

How the West Was Fun:

Between 1864 and 1923, there were 14 forced county-wide expulsions of African Americans (alongside many town expulsions).  The figure below shows the percentage of African Americans living in Vermillion County, Indiana in the years before and after an expulsion.

Click here for an interactive website with information about these expulsions made by the Austin American Statesman newspaper.  See also our post about “Sundown Towns,” which kept Blacks out by making it illegal for them to be there after sundown.

Via Jose at Thick Culture.

Anneliese W. sent us this Australian ad campaign for Noble Rise bread.  The claim is that other breads are “bland” and that Noble Rise bread is not.  To make the claim, the advertisements use Black people to signify spice and flavor.  Anneliese writes:

…what really struck me about this campaign is the use of coloured bodies to represent excitement, flavour and coolness. The slogan for the campaign is something like “take a stand against bland” – bland being ‘normal’ and everyday, and in some ads the obvious unspoken is that blandness is white.  Framing blackness as the opposite of ‘bland’ is just another example of the ‘other-ing’ of black bodies, and re-enforcing the idea that white western culture is ‘bland’ or non-existent.

[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=aXfxKJnR54Q[/youtube]

[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=xpO3eF7wrC8[/youtube]

[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=cwIOM3BzjOM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=h3SSPQgm2jA[/youtube]

I offer several more examples of this phenonemon here.

Click to enlarge:

I think it’s interesting that the National Federation of State High School Associations defines cheerleading as a sport.

(Image by Chris Uggen.  Data from the National Federation of State High School Associations.)

The other day I noticed this sticker on a van:

I took a picture of it, just to remind me to look it up, but I didn’t know if it was meant as a joke (a satirical version of gay pride stickers) or what. But it turns out there’s an organization called Straight Pride. The website says they are not homophobic and do not hate gays. This t-shirt leads me to suspect that though they may not “hate” them, they’re not too keen on them, either:

This t-shirt implies that heterosexuality is patriotic:

People are encouraged to send in photos of themselves wearing Straight Pride products. So far the gallery only has a few photos, all of men. The photos are very small, so it’s hard to see a lot of detail, but this one seems to link heterosexuality to a certain type of masculinity; they appear to be holding paintball guns:

I thought they might be useful for a discussion of homophobia and attitudes toward homosexuality, particularly the element of “we don’t hate gays, we just support being straight.” There’s a notion of false equivalency here: that “straight pride” is just the same as “gay pride” (similar to what some individuals in “White power” organizations say–they aren’t anti-Black, they’re just proud of being White!). You might discuss this idea of equivalency: given the privileges and benefits that are made available only to straight couples (including, in most states, the right to marry, and as of Tuesday in Arkansas, the right to foster or adopt children), is “straight pride” really the same as “gay pride”? Is it possible to advocate heterosexuality without being homophobic? What is the motivation for advocating it, if it’s not a sense of unease with homosexuality? The gay pride movement aimed to reduce the stigmatization of gays and lesbians, as well as increase access to the rights and benefits straight couples have. What, exactly, is the goal of a straight pride movement, if not to keep gays and lesbians from getting those rights?

When a member of a regularly-excluded group gains entry into what was previously a homogeneous club–say, a Black man is elected President of the United States–that person is sometimes used as “proof” that there are, in fact, no barriers to entry after all. Thus, some of us worry that Obama’s election will be used against those fighting for racial justice. Well, it began before it began. In this clip on CNN, aired before Obama was confirmed the winner, former Secretary of Education Bill Bennet, when asked what his election would mean, remarks:

Well, I’ll tell you one thing it means… You don’t take any excuses anymore from anybody who says, ‘The deck is stacked, I can’t do anything, there’s so much in-built this and that.’

Yes, there’s no more “this and that” and Bill doesn’t want to hear about it anymore.

Scroll forward to about 45 seconds:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvpB-MnM8I8[/youtube]

Clip via Macon D. at Stuff White People Do, who has a nice analysis.

Jason S. sent us this picture of a T-shirt he saw for sale in Berkeley, California. The T-shirt says:

Wingman Services: Don’t Be Sent Out On A Dangerous SOLO Mission!  Let Us BANG Her Fat Friends For You!

A “wingman” is a guy who helps his buddy get laid.  Here the suggestion is that the “wingman” will take the fall and have sex with the fat one so that his buddy can have the desirable, skinny one.  Notice also the violent language used to describe sex.

I found this Merrill Lynch ad in The New Yorker last week:

What I found interesting about it was the text, which is talking about how the guy in the photo is a philanthropist. Examples of his products to “…improve the quality of life of people who are suffering” include better pacemakers, insulin pumps, a visual prosthesis for the blind (who knew?), and cochlear implants for the deaf. The reason it drew my attention is that while (to my knowledge, anyway) pacemakers and insulin are generally accepted as useful technologies that improve people’s lives, cochlear implants have been the subject of controversy. Many people in the deaf community argue deafness is not a “disease” or a “disability,” but simply a state of being (or a subculture), and that efforts to “correct” deafness are offensive and even culturally oppressive (for an example of this perspective, see this discussion from the Drury University website). Thus, while most people would see efforts to treat diabetes as an unequivocal good, and few diabetics would oppose them, opinions about cochlear implants are much more divided, and those who would presumably be seen as the beneficiaries of this technology are not necessarily convinced they need it or that there is anything “wrong” with them that requires intervention. In fact, within the deaf community individuals may face peer pressure to reject implants and those who get them are sometimes stigmatized as sell-outs, basically.

It might be a useful image for sparking a discussion about the social construction and definition of medical problems. Who gets to decide whether a condition is a disease or is just a human characteristic (that is, perhaps uncommon but not automatically problematic)? What if the individuals who have the characteristic disagree with the wider public (or among themselves) about its interpretation? You might use it to spark a discussion about medical interventions and ethics–what are the implications of the increasing ability to use medical innovations to alter a wide variety of characteristics? Are innovations such as cochlear implants helping improve the lives of those who cannot hear, or are they simply reinforcing the idea that deafness isn’t “normal” and thus should be treated as a medical problem? And why does resistance to medical intervention arise surrounding some issues, such as deafness, but not others (for instance, as far as I know, there isn’t the same level of controversy surrounding blindness)?