In this ad American Freedom Center at Valley Forge asks for donations to support the fight against terrorism:
Via Vintage Ads.
history
Vintage Ads posted these three ads–one for an electric refrigerator and two for Gold Dust Cleaner–that compare the product to a Black servant.
The copy in the refrigerator ad reads: “And So Electricity Is Made The Willing Servant.” The accompanying image includes three white women looking leisurely and a Black servant.
Similarly, these two Gold Dust ads personify the product as Black twin babies. The motto is: “Let the GOLD DUST TWINS do your work.”
I think these are fascinating in that they draw our attention to whose work technology is designed to replace. Earlier on this blog we’ve talked about how ads have offered to replace women’s work with the market and with technology. In these cases, the market and technology were needed to ease women’s workload (they certainly couldn’t expect their husbands to do it). In this case, Black servants serve to take women one step further from “women’s work.” Instead of replacing women themselves, the product replace the servants who replaced women, making the comparison of the product to Black servants completely sensical at the time.
Cross posted at Racialicious.
In many places in the midwest the American Indian is very present, but in other places in the U.S., like in California, Disney’s Pocahontas is as close as we get to “Indians.” The idea that American Indians are gone comes, in part, from the ubiquitous representation of them with feathers, buckskins, and moccasins. These anachronisms are everywhere (see, for example, here, here, here, here, and here).
American Indians are as modern as the rest of us, why are representations of American Indians, as they live today, so unusual? And what effect might that have on the psyche of American Indian people?
Via PostSecret.
NEW! One of the commenters at Racialicious pointed us to a cartoon that illustrates how anachronistic images of American Indians may shape our ideas of what they are like:
This graph shows the total number of people allowed into the U.S. under refugee status since 1983, by region of the world:
Here is the key to the numbers on the graph (found here):
*Refers to fiscal years with the exception of 2004, for which data ends in June.
1. Large Cuban and Indochinese waves of refugees, prior to 1983
2a. Cold War period, Glastnost/Perestroika, 1985-1991
2b. Soviet Union dismantled, December 1991
3a. Balkans period: Break-up of Yugoslavia, 1992
3b. Balkans period: Expulsions of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, 1998
4. Civil conflict period: Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Ethiopia, late 1990s-present
5. Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
Authors’ tabulation of ORR data.
This map shows U.S. cities with the largest numbers of refugees resettled there:
Both of these images were found following links in this essay at Migration Information Source.
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.
In her book The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, Joan Jacobs Brumberg argues that increased access to mirrors in the 1800s helped spur middle-class Victorian obsessions with the body, particularly skin and the presence of acne on the face. Mirrors gave the average person more of an ability to imagine themselves through others’ eyes and to inspect every part of their body (and presumably find it lacking).
Samantha J. showed me the logical end-point of this association between mirrors and negative appraisals of one’s body: mirrors that don’t make you do the work of negatively judging your body, but just go ahead and do it for you.
The one on the left says, “Is this one of those CARNIVAL mirrors?!” and the one on the right says, “I’m MUCH too young to be this OLD” (found here). The mirror below (found here) says, “Are you really gonna wear that?”
Of course, if you want a self-esteem boost, or already feel really good about yourself, you could buy this one (found with the one above), which says, “I’m the fairest of them all…”:
Anyway, they might provide a (sort of silly) illustration to go with a discussion of how increased access to mirrors or other technologies (is a mirror a technology?) have affected perceptions of the body and our ability to scrutinize every inch of it (which could, of course, be part of a larger discussion about how changes in technology can affect cultural trends).
Thanks, Samantha J.!
In her book, The Averaged Americans, Sarah Igo talks about the development of statistical methods. Their development allowed for the emergence of the idea of an “average American.” An idea that carried moral weight; “average” was “good.”
Looking at the famous “Middletown” study, the Kinsey Reports, and the invention of polling, she discusses how methods aimed at identifying the average Amerian often reproduced preconceived notions of who was a real American. In the Middletown study, Blacks were ignored because the researchers decided they didn’t count as average Americans. Similarly, polling methodology is aimed at getting a representative sample, but representative of who? Deciding who is being over- or under-represented in a sampling strategy is always a choice.
The invention of the “average American” as an idea is interesting in light of the McCain/Palin rhetoric about “main street” and “real America” and the way in which being a “typical” American is being framed as morally good (image from Stuff White People Do)
.
As with Middletown, the idea of the average American used by McCain/Palin is still racially-coded. We Are Respectable Negroes lists 69 terms–including “regular folks,” “responsible Americans,” and “good hard-working people”–used by speakers in this election to mean middle-class white person. Here are Palin’s words:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vob9vFvojN8[/youtube]
Which brings me to Joe the Plumber. Joe the Plumber, of course, is supposed to represent an “average” American. But every in-group needs an out-group and, like all incarnations of the average, Joe has to be differentiated from the extremes, the non-average, the tails of the distribution: the blacks, the traitors, the poor, the Muslims, etc. Here he is making exactly such an argument about Obama:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw2Wczp9yOc[/youtube]
Indeed, convincing us that Obama is Other has been a central part of the McCain/Palin strategy (see here, here, a here, a here, here, here, here).
Vintage Ads posted these three ads–one for an electric refrigerator and two for Gold Dust Cleaner–that compare the product to a Black servant.
The copy in the refrigerator ad reads: “And So Electricity Is Made The Willing Servant.” The accompanying image includes three white women looking leisurely and a Black servant.
Similarly, these two Gold Dust ads personify the product as Black twin babies. The motto is: “Let the GOLD DUST TWINS do your work.”
I think these are fascinating in that they draw our attention to whose work technology is designed to replace. Earlier on this blog we’ve talked about how ads have offered to replace women’s work with the market and with technology. In these cases, the market and technology were needed to ease women’s workload (they certainly couldn’t expect their husbands to do it). In this case, Black servants serve to take women one step further from “women’s work.” Instead of replacing women themselves, the product replace the servants who replaced women, making the comparison of the product to Black servants completely sensical at the time.
Cross posted at Racialicious.
In many places in the midwest the American Indian is very present, but in other places in the U.S., like in California, Disney’s Pocahontas is as close as we get to “Indians.” The idea that American Indians are gone comes, in part, from the ubiquitous representation of them with feathers, buckskins, and moccasins. These anachronisms are everywhere (see, for example, here, here, here, here, and here).
American Indians are as modern as the rest of us, why are representations of American Indians, as they live today, so unusual? And what effect might that have on the psyche of American Indian people?
Via PostSecret.
NEW! One of the commenters at Racialicious pointed us to a cartoon that illustrates how anachronistic images of American Indians may shape our ideas of what they are like:
This graph shows the total number of people allowed into the U.S. under refugee status since 1983, by region of the world:
Here is the key to the numbers on the graph (found here):
*Refers to fiscal years with the exception of 2004, for which data ends in June.
1. Large Cuban and Indochinese waves of refugees, prior to 1983
2a. Cold War period, Glastnost/Perestroika, 1985-1991
2b. Soviet Union dismantled, December 1991
3a. Balkans period: Break-up of Yugoslavia, 1992
3b. Balkans period: Expulsions of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, 1998
4. Civil conflict period: Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Ethiopia, late 1990s-present
5. Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
Authors’ tabulation of ORR data.
This map shows U.S. cities with the largest numbers of refugees resettled there:
Both of these images were found following links in this essay at Migration Information Source.
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.
In her book The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, Joan Jacobs Brumberg argues that increased access to mirrors in the 1800s helped spur middle-class Victorian obsessions with the body, particularly skin and the presence of acne on the face. Mirrors gave the average person more of an ability to imagine themselves through others’ eyes and to inspect every part of their body (and presumably find it lacking).
Samantha J. showed me the logical end-point of this association between mirrors and negative appraisals of one’s body: mirrors that don’t make you do the work of negatively judging your body, but just go ahead and do it for you.
The one on the left says, “Is this one of those CARNIVAL mirrors?!” and the one on the right says, “I’m MUCH too young to be this OLD” (found here). The mirror below (found here) says, “Are you really gonna wear that?”
Of course, if you want a self-esteem boost, or already feel really good about yourself, you could buy this one (found with the one above), which says, “I’m the fairest of them all…”:
Anyway, they might provide a (sort of silly) illustration to go with a discussion of how increased access to mirrors or other technologies (is a mirror a technology?) have affected perceptions of the body and our ability to scrutinize every inch of it (which could, of course, be part of a larger discussion about how changes in technology can affect cultural trends).
Thanks, Samantha J.!
In her book, The Averaged Americans, Sarah Igo talks about the development of statistical methods. Their development allowed for the emergence of the idea of an “average American.” An idea that carried moral weight; “average” was “good.”
Looking at the famous “Middletown” study, the Kinsey Reports, and the invention of polling, she discusses how methods aimed at identifying the average Amerian often reproduced preconceived notions of who was a real American. In the Middletown study, Blacks were ignored because the researchers decided they didn’t count as average Americans. Similarly, polling methodology is aimed at getting a representative sample, but representative of who? Deciding who is being over- or under-represented in a sampling strategy is always a choice.
The invention of the “average American” as an idea is interesting in light of the McCain/Palin rhetoric about “main street” and “real America” and the way in which being a “typical” American is being framed as morally good (image from Stuff White People Do)
.
As with Middletown, the idea of the average American used by McCain/Palin is still racially-coded. We Are Respectable Negroes lists 69 terms–including “regular folks,” “responsible Americans,” and “good hard-working people”–used by speakers in this election to mean middle-class white person. Here are Palin’s words:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vob9vFvojN8[/youtube]
Which brings me to Joe the Plumber. Joe the Plumber, of course, is supposed to represent an “average” American. But every in-group needs an out-group and, like all incarnations of the average, Joe has to be differentiated from the extremes, the non-average, the tails of the distribution: the blacks, the traitors, the poor, the Muslims, etc. Here he is making exactly such an argument about Obama:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw2Wczp9yOc[/youtube]
Indeed, convincing us that Obama is Other has been a central part of the McCain/Palin strategy (see here, here, a here, a here, here, here, here).