politics

The new National Review depicts Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor as a Buddha:

Many commentators have criticized the cover for using racial stereotypes.   They write as if the people at the National Review are ignorant (e.g., can’t tell the different between different races).   But it’s not an accident, it’s a purposefully racist joke.  Of all the commentary I’ve seen so far, Neil Sinhababu said it the most clearly (via):

…the joke actually depends on incongruities between the stereotypes of the nonwhite ethnicities involved. The Buddha-like pose and Asian features are tied to lofty pretensions of sagelike wisdom. And what sort of person is it who’s pretending to be some kind of sage? A Hispanic woman! As if.

The in-joke in this cover is for people who have already internalized a stereotype of Hispanic women as hotheaded and not that bright. Put one of them in the Buddha suit, and if you’ve absorbed the right racist stereotypes, the incongruity is hilarious.

I think the larger story here is not that the cover is racist, but that race-based criticism is fair game in contemporary U.S. politics.  The last election should have made this abundantly clear (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and herefor examples).

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Thomas Sander at the Social Capital Blog writes: “Obviously the $1,000,000 question is whether these behavioral changes are likely to continue beyond the Obama candidacy.” I think the answer to this, at least as far as racial composition goes, is yes. What we see here is a two decade long trend, not a blip inspired by Obama.

Data compiled by the the Pew Research Center, via Thick Culture.

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.

The always-awesome Miguel, of El Forastero, sent in an interesting image and post from Puente Aéreo about an article in El Correo ridiculing a Peruvian congressional representative , Hilaria Supa, for her language skills. Supa represents the district of Cusco, an area where the majority of residents speak Quechua as a native language, not Spanish. The magazine ran an image on the cover that shows notes she was taking during a legislative session.

Just a disclaimer, the translations below are mine, not Miguel’s, so if they’re incorrect it’s my fault, not his; I read Spanish decently well and I gave it my best shot, but if you think I misinterpreted the meaning of something, by all means let me know. Nicely.

The caption under the photo on the El Correo website says, “Según la hoja de vida de Hilaria Supa, en 1991 impulsó la alfabetización de mujeres campesinas a través de la Federación de Mujeres de Anta (FEMCA),” which translates as, more or less, “According to the bio of Hilaria Supa, in 1991 she began a literacy campaign for rural women as part of the Women’s Federation of Anta”). Clearly the idea is to ridicule her–this woman claims to have worked on literacy issues for rural woman?

Some quotes from the online article:

… lo que descubrió una reveladora foto de Correo, sus limitaciones en cuanto a ortografía y sintaxis dejan mucho que desear. [“As shown in a revelatory photo by Correo, her orthography and syntax leave much to be desired.”]

Muchos años antes de ser elegida congresista, Hilaria Supa se desempeñó como empleada del hogar en el Cusco, Arequipa y Lima. [“Many years before her election to congress, Hilaria Supa  was a house servant in Cusco, Arequipa, and Lima.”]

…su colega Martha Hildebrandt se quejó de sus destempladas protestas sobre un proyecto para declarar oficiales las lenguas aborígenes. “Miren los modales de estas niñas quechuahablantes”, comentó. [“Her colleague Martha Hildebrandta complained about her acrimonious (inharmonious?) protests about a project to declare indigenous languages official*. ‘Look at the manners of these childish Quechua-speakers,’ she said.”] *Apparently this refers to the fact that Supa and another indigenous representative spoke their swearing-in oath in Quechua instead of Spanish, the first officials in Peru ever to do so. Apparently this pissed people off even though Quechua is one of Peru’s two official languagues, along with Spanish.

The article also clearly implies that she doesn’t deserve to be in Congress, interviewing people about how political parties are supposed to serve as a filter to be sure that not just “anyone” can be elected.

Miguel says,

This picture is a clear statement of the white, Spanish-speaking (and male) [establishment] that opposes the participation of indigenous people (and women) in the government.

Indeed. Although Quechua is an official language of Peru, and even though large segments of the population do not speak Spanish as their native language and there is no requirement that they do so, the message here is clear: attempts to redefine the political establishment in Peru so that indigenous communities can participate more fully on their own terms (as opposed to being forced to completely assimilate to non-indigenous, Spanish-speaking Peruvian culture as a requirement for respect) do not deserve a place in public life.

NOTE: Sigh. After reading everything in Spanish and translating the above sections into English, both of which made my brain hurt, it finally occurred to me to see if any English-language blogs or media outlets have discussed the article and provided translations. Yes, they have. Google “Hilaria Supa Peru” and several items will come up. Then I just felt dumb, but since I have papers to grade and no time to redo it, I’m just leaving my translations and hoping for the best. You might want to check out some other English-language sites for more discussion.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

From the folks at Good Magazine, a “look at the 20 countries from which the most people came to America in 2008,” including how many were immediate relatives of US citizens, and how many received asylum, based on data from the Department of Homeland Security.

Does anyone know why data from North Korea and South Korea is combined? How can country be “unknown” for so many?

Joshua F. sent in this image from the Des Moines Register of an individual protesting the state Supreme Court’s ruling to legalize gay marriage:

The Culver being told to “man up” is Iowa’s Democratic governor. Joshua says,

I just think it’s kind of telling that Culver is being urged to preserve the traditional definition of marriage with the phrase “man up.”  Only by tapping into honest masculinity can Culver fend off effeminate men and mannish women who want to marry each other…

It is a great example of the assumption that masculinity automatically includes homophobia; being a “real man” means not just being straight, but being opposed to gays and gay rights.

Also…same-sex animals do mate and raise young; you can see several examples here.

Some ecards via Feministe.

SocProf, from The Global Sociology Blog, has an interesting post about gender in the public sphere. Here is a photo (from Echidne of the Snakes) of the “first spouses” of the G20 nations (that is, the spouses of the political leaders of the G20):

Except…someone’s missing. Two of the G20 countries (Germany and Argentina) have heterosexual, married female leaders, and their husbands aren’t in the photo. I don’t know why–were they not invited to the event? Did they choose not to come? SocProf asks, “Would the husbands have looked out of place here? Would this have been embarrassing to them?”

But SocProf points out that a different disappearing act recently occurred in Israel:

…look what happened in reverse in a group photo of the newly-formed Israeli cabinet. On top is the traditional cabinet group photo, at the bottom is the “touched-up” version that appeared in [the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yated Neeman]… notice the difference?

Indeed, the two female Cabinet members have been photoshopped out.

SocProf says,

[In the G20 photo]…the men are not visibly absent. It is their presence that would be noticeable. And also note the setting in which the women pose, the soft colors, pink carpet and sofa with pastel background. It looks like a somewhat formal yet a little domestic setting.

The bottom photo is formal, no pink or pastel there! Icy grey with flags and orderly pose…It is a perfect illustration of the gendered domains: where men belong and where women belong.

Taken together, the three images, though taken for different purposes in different places, provide a great illustration of how we often make people who don’t fit cultural gender norms invisible…sometimes very literally.

Also see our post on an ultra-Orthodox newspaper that airbrushed girls out of a photo of children.

UPDATE: Commenter Liz says,

I object to the use of the word ‘airbrushing’, because that’s not what happened: those photos were edited, manipulated, or fabricated, but airbrushing is a specific photoshop tool for minor modification. You can’t completely change the reality of a photograph with an airbrush, unless someone would like to tell me that those two male stand-ins are actually just drawings made with photoshop.

If you use the same word (airbrushing) for taking out a model’s cellulite as well as removing heads of state from photographs, you trivialise what’s been done. Digital editing is only going to become more and more common, and it’s important to find the right words to explain how a photo has been altered.

Good point–thanks for pointing the language issue out. I didn’t know what airbrushing referred to, exactly, and had just heard it used to describe altering an image in general.

Elisabeth R. sent us this one-minute commercial.  I’ll let you experience it as designed (it has a surprise ending) and include my comments below:

We might feel that feminism and gun ownership are incompatible.  An argument could be made that (especially machine) gun ownership is anti-feminist, but it’s also true that we artificially cluster rather random, unconnected ideas into political ideologies that we then understand to be compatible by definition.  For example, what does being anti-gay marriage and anti-taxes have to do with each other?  Nothing.

For more on pro-gun propaganda, see this extensive set of really fascinating posters making feminist, anti-racist, and pro-gay arguments in favor of gun ownership.

For another example of an effort to bridge the political binary, see this post on pro-environment/anti-immigrant activism