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The U.S. is not a very race-literate society.  We aren’t taught much about the history of race relations or racial inequality in school and almost nothing about how to think about race or how to talk to one another about these theoretically and emotionally challenging issues.  Many Americans, then, don’t have a very sophisticated understanding of race dynamics, even as most of them want racial equality and would be horrified to be called “racist.”

In teaching Race and Ethnicity, then, I notice that some of the more naive students will cling to color-blindness.  “Race doesn’t matter,” they say, “I don’t even see color.”   Being colorblind seems like the right thing to be when you’ve grown up being told that (1) all races are or should be equal and (2) you should never judge a book by its cover.  It is the logical outcome of the messages we give many young people about race.

But, of course, color blindness fails because race, despite being a social invention, still matters in our society.  Enter the ongoing scandal about the Cadbury candy bar ad featuring Naomi Campbell, sent in by Dolores R.,  Jack M., and Terri.  The ad compares the Dairy Milk Bliss Bar to Campbell.  It reads: “Move over Naomi, there’s a new Diva in town.”

The ad has been called racist because it compares Campbell to a chocolate bar; chocolate is a term sometimes used to describe black people’s skin color or overall sexual “deliciousness.”  The ad, then, is argued to be foregrounding skin color and even playing on stereotypes of black women’s sexuality.

So what happened here?  One the one hand, I see the critics’ point.  On the other, I can also imagine the advertising people behind this ad thinking that they want to link the candy bar with the idea of a diva (rich, indulgent, etc.), and choosing Campbell because she is a notorious diva, not because she’s a black, female supermodel.  They could argue that they were being colorblind and that race was not at all a consideration in designing this ad.

The problem is that being colorblind in a society where race still colors our perceptions simply doesn’t work.  The truth is that race may not have been a consideration in designing the Cadbury ad, but it should have been.  Not because it’s fun or functional to play with race stereotypes, but because racial meaning is something that must be managed, whether you like it or not.  This is where Cadbury failed.

In my classes, I ask my earnestly-anti-racist students to replace color-blindness with color-consciousness.  We need to be thoughtful and smart about race, racial meaning, and racial inequality.  Racism is bad, but color-blindess is a just form of denial; being conscious about color — seeing it for what it is and isn’t, both really and socially — is a much better way to bring about a just society.

Cadbury, for what it’s worth, has apologized.

See also the Oreo Barbie, the Black Lil’ Monkey Doll, the Obama Sock Monkey, Disparate Pricing for Black and White Dolls, and Accidentally Illustrating Evil with Skin Color.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Trigger warning for those sensitive to war, suicide, domestic violence, or people suffering from war-related ptsd.

Generations of U.S. children have played with the iconic little green army men.  Along with other war toys, they contribute to the socialization of some young boys into the idea that war is an exciting and heroic adventure.

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An artist at the Dorothy Collective decided to reconfigure the little green army men so that they would tell the less glamorous stories.  Inspired by an article about the suffering of a Colorado Springs-based battalion, she created these little green army men:

They’re a heart-wrenching commentary about the grown up realities of war and the socialization of children into the fantasy.  Thanks to Hope H. for the tip.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

We’re trying to get our inbox under control, so I decided it was time for another of my occasional round-ups of gendered kids’ items, so here you go. My favorite example was an ad from a flyer for Save On Foods in Victoria, Canada, sent in by Joanna M. The advertised products are boysz and girlsz inhalers, for all your gendered breathing needs. The boyz’ version is in green and gray with a graphic of a skateboarder, while the girlz’ inhaler is, of course pink, with a flower:

Amanda K.H. took this photo of 3 kid-sized Civil War hats for sale at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, IL. In addition to the Union blue and the Confederate gray, there was a pink version:

The Pragmatist let us know about onesies for sale at Mommy and Kids Allure Boutique. The onesies include lists of “ingredients” for boys and girls. What are boys made of? Love, energy, and dirt:

For girls, it’s love, beauty, and kindness:

Elliott M. noticed that the Garanimals website doesn’t just just divide the clothing into boys’ and girls’ sections, but uses gendered language to describe them. The boys’ clothing is described with active language (“ready, set, go!”), and they’ll look “cool”. Girls, on the other hand, are “sugar and spice, everything nice” and a “princess,” and they’ll be “looking great and feeling better,” “cute,” “eye catching,” and “adorable”:

An anonymous reader saw these sets of stickers, divided into themes for boys and girls:

What are boy themes? Space, travel/transportation, dinosaurs, sports, and pirates, among others. Girls, on the other hand, are associated with stars, flowers, butterflies, clothes, makeup, personal hygiene, cheerleading, and shopping. Since the reader was buying them to give out to a Girl Guide group (equivalent to Girl Scouts in the U.S.) for badges about science, being active, and personal hygiene, she had to buy both sets.

Finally, Sarah M. sent in a photo she took at Target of two toys that define boys by what they do and girls by what they are. The toys are those types of little sit-and-scoot toy cars kids push around with their feet. The boys’ version is red and is, appropriately, called a Lil’ Fire Truck Ride-On. The pink version, on the other hand, is the Lil’ Princess Ride-On — because apparently there’s no appropriate vehicle to define as “girly,” so the easiest way to gender the toy was just to call it a thing for princesses and be done with it:

UPDATE: Philip Cohen pointed out another example on his blog, Family Inequality. Baby blankets at Amazon were available in blue for the “little man” and pink for the “little cupcake,” in case your baked goods are cold:

Recently at Feministing, Maya Dusenbery wrote about an ad from Germany’s International Human Rights campaign that, as she put it, is “a lesson in how not to advocate for women’s rights.”

As Dusenbery writes,

It seems the folks who created this ad not only have a hard time seeing agency but actually went out of their way to erase it as thoroughly as possible and then stomp on it some more. And then equated women who wear the burqa with bags of trash. Literally.

I completely agree, and would like to add some broader context.  This is not at all surprising, given the recent of attempts in the West to obscure the agency of Muslim women in juxtaposition to their white, Western saviors. One of the more blatant examples of this was the discourse of the United States government that it was going to war in Afghanistan in part to save Afghan women from the Taliban. Laura Shepherd argued in an excellent 2006 article in The International Feminist Journal of Politics (which I’vecited before) that the US discursively constructed Afghan women as the “Helpless Victim” that was submissive and lacking agency, under the oppressive control of the “Irrational Barbarian.” This discourse, was used, of course, to posit the United States (specifically, its military) as the saviors who could rectify the situation for these women. Much as the agency of the women in the German PSA was erased, this narrative denied the agency of Afghan women, who, as Shepherd writes, are afforded “only pity and a certain voyeuristic attraction” (p. 20).

Of course, this specific discourse hasn’t ended. As this TIME Magazine cover from last year shows, it continues to serve as a means of justifying the US occupation of Afghanistan.

This discourse assumes, obviously, that the US presence in Afghanistan is a clear benefit for women in the country, a position at least some women’s organizations in Afghanistan contest. Samhita Mukhopadhyay at Feministing had an excellent post on this issue last summer.

I should also mention France’s recently-instituted ban on the full-faced veil, which Dusenbery argues – citing Jos Truitt – is a similar erasure of agency. I agree with her, and again would add that this fits in with this general (Orientalist) discourse about Muslim women, their uncivilized oppressors, and their White saviors.

John McMahon is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he also participates in the Women’s Studies Certificate Program.  He is interested in post-structuralism, issues relating to men and feminism, gendered practices in international relations, gender and political theory, and questions of American state identity.  John blogs at Facile Gestures, where this post originally appeared.

See also our post in which we criticize a set of public service ads that compared women the genital cutting to blow up sex dolls.

Allison K. sent in another example of the sexualization of young girls.  Abercrombie Kids is selling bikinis with “push-up” tops.  According to Wikipedia, the company markets its products at kids age 7-14. The average age of puberty is 12.   So, at what age should girls start trying to enhance their cleavage?  How old is too young?

UPDATE: In the last week this post was shared and tweeted by many of you.  News outlets took up the issue and, in response to the public pressure, Abercrombie first changed the language (taking out the phrase “push up” and just leaving “triangle”), then took the product off the site altogether.  On their Facebook page, they wrote that “We agree with those who say it is best ‘suited’ for girls age 12 and older.”

For more on the sexualization of young girls, see our posts on sexually suggestive teen brands, adultifying children of color, “trucker girl” baby booties, “future trophy wife” kids’ tee, House of Dereón’s girls’ collection, 6-year-olds in French Vogue, “is modesty making a comeback?“, more sexualized clothes and toys, sexist kids’ tees, a trifecta of sexualizing girls, a zebra-striped string bikini for infants, a nipple tassle t-shirt for girls, even more icky kids’ t-shirts, “are you tighter than a 5th grader?” t-shirt, the totally gross “I’m tight like spandex” girls’ t-shirt, a Halloween costume post, Toddlers and Tiaras, and girls in the World of Dance tour.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Elisabeth R., Rebecca H., and Kalani R. all sent in a Volkswagen commercial produced for SuperBowl weekend that they found striking, both for the commercial itself and reactions to it. In the commercial, a child dressed up as Darth Vader tries using The Force on various items around the house. What struck all three of the submitters is the ambiguous gendering of the ad:

At no point is the child’s gender made clear. If we just went with the information in the ad, we might conclude the child is a girl, based on scene in the stereotypically super-pink bedroom. But given the usual clear gendering of toys, Elisabeth, Rebecca, and Kalani all enjoyed seeing an ad in which this didn’t occur.

But the possibility that a girl might dress up as Darth Vader seems difficult for a lot of people to grasp. In the pages and pages of comments on the commercial on YouTube, the child is repeatedly referred to as “he” or “the boy.” In one comment thread, when someone brings up the possibility the child is a girl due to the pink bedroom, someone else says no, it was a boy in his sister’s room.

There’s no particular reason to assume this child is a boy except that we associate Star Wars with boys (and generally see males as the default if gender isn’t otherwise specified). I think the reactions to the video are a good example of the power of gendering: because viewers have pre-existing ideas about gender, kids, and what they’d be interested in, they’re likely to apply those assumptions even in the face of potentially contradictory information and to come up with explanations that leave the pre-existing ideas intact.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention when I was writing the post that none of the commenters who saw the child as a boy seemed to think the pink room was his — I read several different comment threads and when it was brought up, people assume it’s a sister’s room. Also, reader Angie thinks the stuff in the pink room looks too old for the child, since the toys look like the type an older kid would collect. I am clueless about that, which is why I struggle to buy gifts for kids: I no longer have a clear sense of what types of things kids are playing with at what age.

UPDATE 2: This is separate from what the gender of the role of the child in the commercial, but VW has confirmed that the actor who played the child is a boy.

On another note, the fact that VW is using Star Wars nostalgia in its ads as a way to appeal to adult customers makes me feel very old for some reason.

In the last few hundred years, dark-skinned peoples have been likened to apes in an effort to dehumanize them and justify their oppression and exploitation.  This is familiar to most Americans as something that is done peculiarly to Black people (as examples, see  here, here, and here).  The history of U.S. discrimination against the Irish, however, offers an interesting comparative data point.  The Irish, too, have been compared to apes, suggesting that this comparison is a generalizable tactic of oppression, not one inspired by the color of the skin of Africans.

Irish woman, “Bridget McBruiser,” contrasted with Florence Nightengale:

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A similar contrasting of the English woman (left) and the Irish woman (right):

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Cartoon facing off “the British Lion” and “the Irish monkey”:

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An Irishman, looking decidedly simian, in the left of this cartoon:

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The Irish and the Black are compared as equally problematic to the North and the South respectively.  Notice how both are drawn to look less human:

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A depiction of an Irish riot (1867):

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An Irishman, depicted as drunk, sits atop a powderkeg threatening to destroy the U.S.:

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Two similar cartoons from the same source:

About this cartoon, Michael O’Malley at George Mason University writes:

In this cartoon, captioned “A King of -Shanty,” the comparison becomes explicit. The “Ashantee” were a well known African tribe; “shanty” was the Irish word for a shack or poor man’s house. The cartoon mocks Irish poverty, caricatures irish people as ape like and primitive, and suggests they are little different from Africans, who the cartoonists seems to see the same way. This cartroon irishman has, again, the outhrust mouth, sloping forehead, and flat wide nose of the standard Irish caricature.

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So, there you have it.  Being compared to apes is tactic of oppression totally unrelated to skin color — that is, it has nothing to do with Black people and everything to do with the effort to exert control and power.

For more on anti-Irish discrimination, see our post on Gingerism.  And see our earlier post on anti-Irish caricaturein which we touched on this before.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Love Isn’t Enough.

Brandy B. let us know about an interesting article by Isis the Scientist at Science Blogs on the apparent whitening of a children’s cartoon character for the Christmas toy market. PBS’s cartoon, “Super Why!”, includes a female character, Princess Presto, who has the power to spell. Here’s what she looks like:

Yet the plush doll version of Princess Presto (who is supposed to have one White and one African American parent) looks significantly different:

I found another Princess Presto doll online as well:

I did find one set where she looks more like the original:

Isis the Scientists says that in comments to an article on the topic at the Orlando Sentinel, someone claiming to represent the company says the plush doll looks more like the original in person than the pictures online and says the following:

…The hair on the doll is more purple than black and this was an aesthetic choice…The placement of the facial features was intentionally tweaked to make the embroidered beanies look cute, so there is a slight difference from the onscreen character. The alterations were similarly made across all characters in the line, not just Princess Presto. There are almost always slight differences when translating the onscreen characters to off-air product especially with regard to colors because we have to use PMS or CMYK color choices for products.

Isis says BS — that having seen an actual version of the plush toy, it looks like it does in the photo, with very light skin, and that aside from that, other manufacturers seem to be able to make African American dolls just fine. And saying you changed things for “aesthetic” purposes doesn’t explain why you thought her existing characteristics were insufficiently aesthetically pleasing. Of course, we also don’t know for sure the person writing the comment was from PBS.

I tend to side with Isis here: the idea that technical limitations prevent making a more accurate representation of a dark-skinned doll is…sketchy, to say the least, and makes me think PBS needs to partner with a better toy design firm. And the choices about what the Princess Presto doll should look like in doll form put PBS in the position of appearing to think that a mixed-race character needs to be whitened to sell. PBS’s dolls exist in a marketplace where we’ve seen controversies about African American dolls being literally valued less than White dolls, and whatever their supposed reasons, it’s hard to get around the fact that all of the choices made in the name of aesthetics added up to a doll that looks awfully White.