history

Many of you may have seen the image below. It compares the 2004 to the 2008 vote and shows, by color, how much more Democratic (blue) or Republican (red) each county leaned in 2008. In essence, compared to 2004, in this election Democrats increased the proportion of the vote that they received in most counties.

You may not have seen, however, this next image. This next image shows the same data but compares 1992 to 2008. Looking across those sixteen years it is clear that, while this last election may have looked good for Democrats, the last five have moved the country significantly to the right. If you are a Democrat, then, this election is one step forward after 10 steps back. And, if you are a Republican, it may very well be a very small setback.

(Data from the New York Times; images found here.)

In this ad American Freedom Center at Valley Forge asks for donations to support the fight against terrorism:

Via Vintage Ads.

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.

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.

Penny R. sent in this image (found here via Pennamite) of a 1919 magazine cover.  The image is of two women embracing.  One represents “Justice” and the other “American Womanhood.”  It is captioned “At Last.”

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.!