race/ethnicity: Blacks/Africans

This is a cover of Vogue featuring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen. Notice the postures: LeBron as the hulking, angry black man, and Gisele as arm candy. Apparently this issue has a whole section on “the World’s Top Models and Star Athletes.” Hmmm, I wonder what the gender breakdown is?

Notice also the way in which the image reproduces the famous King Kong imagery:

Here is a link to an MSNBC segment on the cover.

Thanks to Carmela Z. for sending this image along!

NEW (Jan ’10)!  Ruth D’R. and a reader-who-wishes-to-remain-anonymous sent us this (highly photoshopped) photo of Kanye West and Lady Gaga, one of the images in her “Fame Monster” CD liner notes.  Some argue that it, too, reproduces the racialized King Kong imagery in which a black man (threatens to) ravage a white woman:

Some may think that this is a reach.  But I think her nudity, plus the symbols of primitivity (the plants, the erupting volcano, and even the khakis) clearly invoke animalism.

The text says “Awakens like a horsewhip on the backflesh. A slap to the cerebellum since 1780.”

When I think of horsewhips and 1780…well, I don’t necessarily think of horses being whipped.

Am I nuts here?

The centaur scene in Disney’s highly acclaimed cartoon Fantasia (1940) clearly communicates gendered expectations for men and women, but there are also racial politics. First, note that, in the film as released, all of the centaurs end up in color-matched heterosexual pairs.  Second, most people do not know that the original centaur scene included a pickaninny slave to the centaur females and exotic, brown-skinned zebra-girl servants.

Here’s a link to the whole thing (embedding disabled, but it works as of Feb. ’11).

A clear still in black and white:

Fuzzy color stills from the youtube clip:

Don’t miss our post showing bugs bunny in blackface, too.

How do we feel about this campaign, by Keep A Child Alive, to encourage people to donate money to Africa on the basis that we are all African? (Apparently we only care about ourselves, so if we suggest that Africa is ourselves, then we’ll donate?)

Do Americans, many of whom are white people with privilege based in race, class, and nation, get to claim Africa as theirs? Do white people now get to have blackness too?  Is this insulting? Some people think so. Here is a larger version of the poster with Gwyneth Paltrow (scroll down for a response):

I borrowed this image from Blackademic.

NEW!  Julie C. noticed that the Canadian Centre for Diversity put out a similar campaign.  There’s something very interesting about it, but I’m having a hard time putting it into words.  Click here to watch the short commercial.  What do y’all think of it?

If you have a pulse and exist in or near the liberal blogsophere, you have likely been told that the website Stuff White People Like is hilarious. I don’t share the love for the site, but it might be useful to bring it up in class in order to have a discussion about WHY people like it so much. What, exactly, is it tapping into?

The website, Black People Love Us, is, in my opinion, a smarter satire.

And my personal favorite, which I have successfully used in my Race and Ethnicity course numerous times, is Damali Ayo’s Rent-A-Negro. It packs a real punch. (Oh, and yes, people do sometimes think the site is real and fill out the order information, including their credit card numbers.)

The 30-second (or so) videos below have been interspersed with MTV’s regular programming as part of Black History Month. MTV got Cornel West to be their superstar academic and expert on the Black American experience. The videos serve as the occasion for some interesting questions:

First, how do we evaluate the use of Black musicians, actors, and personalities by MTV? Is “representation” enough? Or does contemporary representation look uncomfortably like the representation of the past? (If you haven’t seen it, watch Spike Lee’s Bamboozled.)

Second, what does it mean that Cornel West signed on with MTV with what is, in effect, a mutual endorsement? Do we approve of Cornel West using his significant influence and importance in this way? Is this good from a reformist perspective? Problematic from a radical perspective? Did he “sell out”?

Third, how effective are these spots? I know little about the audience of MTV, but I imagine there are a lot of people who do not know who Cornel West is and are not inclined to offer him immediate respect. Cornel is idiosyncratic. Does your average MTV viewer see a gap-toothed, afro-wearing guy with odd mannerisms called “Professor” (which, we know, could mean anything) as authoritative? Or a buffoon?

Further, what do we think of the spots themselves? Is their content helpful? Do they teach us anything? Do we like what they teach us? Or is it just more empty lip-service to Black Americans?

Watch and tell us what you think:

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/63979709[/vimeo]

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/63979813[/vimeo]

Thanks to Richard for the heads up on this one.

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.

Another Super Bowl ad using racial/ethnic images: cars.com has a “witch doctor,” clearly based on stereotypical images of African “tribes,” as African peoples are always called.

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

…Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction (Superbowl 2003). 

Here’s the video (don’t blink!):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq_N792Bl5Y[/youtube] 

I use this story along with this image to illustrate agenda setting. Because the media made such a huge deal about this, it was something that most people talked about with at least one other person and an issue on which most people formed an opinion. (I like the two-second video because it shows just how quick it was.) I contrast it alongside some genuinely newsworthy event that no one noticed because it didn’t get covered and no one, now, remembers. (Richard mentions, by the way, that there were a ton of erectile dysfunction commercials during the superbowl that year that did not attract media outrage.)Thanks to Ang! I stole the picture and the idea of using this issue to talk about agenda setting from her years ago.