Nadya at Coilhouse sent in this ad campaign for Kiwi Kleen Toilet Cleaner. In order to disgust you, the ads suggest that sharing a toilet seat is like sitting directly on someone else’s ass and, to disgust you further, they suggest that that someone else could be a Mexican wrestler, a fat pig, and a transsexual. Keep it classy, Kiwi Kleen. (Images found at Coilhouse and Coloribus.)
English First is an organization advocating the adoption of English-only laws in the U.S., which would mean government agencies and officials would not be allowed to conduct any type of business in a language other than English. They also oppose bilingual education and bilingual ballots. Here is a screenshot of their homepage’s banner; perhaps you will note a small irony, coming from an organization concerned about people being unable to use the English language:
There is a very clear anti-immigrant stance, which in some cases bleeds over into a general anti-Latino perspective. For instance, the website has a link to a letter sent to Attorney General Mukasey, expressing concern over Department of Justice statements about plans to crack down on voter intimidation:
Yet under the new DOJ policies as we understand them, anyone who dares complain when they see a busload of illegal aliens pulling up to a polling place could be arrested on the spot by agents of their own government.
What’s interesting here is the idea that you could immediately spot “a busload of illegal aliens.” I could be wrong here, but I’m guessing that to at least some members of the organization, any vehicle with Latinos (or other brown-skinned people) in it might be targeted as full of “illegal aliens.”
The organization also blames Hispanic legislators for the failure of the original financial bailout bill.
One of English First’s projects is No Statehood for Puerto Rico. Technically speaking, the population of Puerto Rico has the right to become a state, should a majority ever vote to do so. All Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and can travel freely between the island and the mainland, with no need for a passport or visa. Here are some images from the homepage:
I think the hand at the bottom of that last image is supposed to be begging for a handout.
All of these images portray Puerto Rico as a money-sucking burden on the rest of the U.S. The website questions Puerto Ricans’ patriotism (because they protest military training at Vieques, unlike the good people of Oklahoma, who do not protest military training at Ft. Sill), links Puerto Rico to terrorism, and argues that Puerto Rico is a “proud, Spanish-speaking nation” and thus wouldn’t want to be a state anyway (leading to questions of why any of this is an issue, since the population would presumably never vote for statehood anyway). I am unclear whether English First advocates total Puerto Rican independence from the U.S., or just keeping it from becoming a state.
English First has a handy list of states that have English-Only laws, as well as which ones have been overturned.
You might also check out Lisa’s recent post on an organization that linked anti-immigration and pro-environment stances.
I’ve posted about the phenomenon of what I’ve called leftist balkanization or the way in which leftist causes tend to be narrowly focused such that they undermine other leftist causes (see here for my original post and here and here for two follow-ups). Perhaps the opposite of such balkanization is social movements that try to bring together issues that find themselves on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Below are two advertisements for the pro-environment anti-immigration movement. The argument is that restricting immigration is good for the environment.
This first commercial from the Californians for Population Stabilization makes exactly this point:
You might be asking yourself whether this pro-environment anti-immigration message is really just an anti-immigration message shrouded in leftist rhetoric. In this case, at least based on the commercial below from the same organization, the answer appears to be “yes.”
Of course, it’s not necessarily true that all anti-immigrant pro-environment messages are secretly simply xenophobic. For a great discussion of this troubled movement, see Leslie King’s great article that shows how challenging it is to mobilize a grass roots movement when one half of your message offends one half of the population and the other half of your message offends the other.
Via copyranter.
Cross-posted at Love Isn’t Enough.
Ann DuCille, in her book Skin Trade, takes two issues with “ethnic” Barbies.
First, she takes issue with the fact that “ethnic” Barbies are made from the same mold as “real” Barbies (though sometimes with different paint on their faces). This reifies a white standard of beauty as THE standard of beauty. Black women are beautiful only insofar as they look like white women (see also this post). DuCille writes:
…today Barbie dolls come in a rainbow coalition of colors, races, ethnicities, and nationalities, [but] all of those dolls look remarkably like the stereotypical white Barbie, modified only by a dash of color and a change of clothes.
Consider:
But, second, DuCille also takes takes issue with the idea that Mattell would try to make ethnic Barbies more “authentic.” Trying to agree on one ideal form for a racial or ethnic group is no more freeing than trying to get everyone to accord to one ideal based in whiteness. DuCille writes:
…it reifies race. You can’t make an ‘authentic’ Black, Hispanic, Asian, or white doll. You just can’t. It will always be artificially constraining…
And also:
Just what are we saying when we claim that a doll does or does not look… black? How does black look? …What would make a doll look authentically African American or realistically Nigerian or Jamaican? What prescriptive ideals of blackness are inscribed in such claims of authenticity? …The fact that skin color and other ‘ethnic features’ …are used by toymakers to denote blackness raises critical questions about how we manufacture difference.
Indeed, difference is, literally, manufactured through the production of “ethnic” Barbies and this is done, largely, for a white audience.
To be profitable, racial and cultural diversity… must be reducible to such common, reproducible denominators as color and costume.
The majority of American Barbie buyers are only interested in “ethnicity” so long as it is made into cute and harmless variety. This reminds us that, when toy makers (and others) manufacture difference, they are doing so for money. DuCille writes:
…capitalism has appropriated what it sees as certain signifiers of blackness and made them marketable… Mattel… mass market[s] the discursively familiar–by reproducing stereotyped forms and visible signs of racial and ethnic difference.
Consider:
Black Barbie and Hispanic Barbie, 1980
Oriental Barbie, date unknown
Diwali Barbie (India)
Hula Honey Barbie
Kwanzaa Barbie
Radiant Rose Ethnic Barbie, 1996
There are many reasons to find this problematic. DuCille turns to the Jamaican Barbie as an example.
The back of Jamaican Barbie’s box tells us:
How-you-du (Hello) from the land of Jamaica, a tropical paradise known for its exotic fruit, sugar cane, breath-taking beaches, and reggae beat! …most Jamaicans have ancestors from Africa, so even though our official language is English, we speak patois, a kind of ‘Jamaica Talk,’ filled with English and African words. For example, when I’m filled with boonoonoonoos, I’m filled with much happiness!
Notice how Jamaica is reduced to cutesy things like exotic fruit and sugar cane and Jamaican people are characterized as happy-go-lucky and barely literate while the history of colonialism is completely erased.
So DuCille doesn’t like it when Black Barbies, for example, look like White Barbies and she doesn’t like it when Black Barbies look like Black Barbies either. What’s the solution? The solution simply may not lie in representation, so much as in actually correcting the injustice in which representation occurs.
(Images found here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
For a related post on race and friendship, see here.
The following graphs all show how much of American’s wealth is (or, um, was) in the form of home equity. They are all based on 2002 data, several years before housing prices hit their peaks, which means by the time the housing bubble burst, home equity was an even larger proportion of all net worth.
It’s not that I didn’t already know the economy was in trouble. That’s obvious–I live in Vegas, all I have to do is drive around a little and see all the houses sitting empty. But looking at these images I kept thinking, “a good portion of that home equity wealth is just gone.” On paper, we had all this wealth, and people borrowed based on it…and a lot of it is simply gone. Just…poof. Gone!
This one shows what percent of all net worth in the U.S. falls into various categories.
Here we have median net worth in 2002 for different age groups…and then the lighter purple bar, which is median net worth if you took out home equity:
A similar breakdown, except by race, not age this time. Notice how much Blacks and Hispanics lag behind Asians, and how much they lag behind non-Hispanic Whites in terms of net worth:
On the up side, if the stock market keeps going down, then home equity as a percent of our net worth will go up again because we’ll have lost so much in stocks. So, you know, look on the bright side!
All of these graphs came from “Net Worth and the Assets of Households: 2002,” written by Alfred O. Gottschalck and published by the U.S. Census Bureau in April 2008.
Prompted by Gwen’s recent post on adoption announcement cards, Carmen from the excellent blog Racialicious sent us this link to a post about onesies for transnationally adopted infants by iBastard. As iBastard says
…when people go out of their way to say something, there’s usually more to it than the literal message. There’s a metamessage (the message behind the message itself) or subtext of some kind.
These first two onesies (found at Racialicious and here respectively) are from children adopted from Guatemala:
And this one, also found at Racialicious, is for babies adopted from China:
The first and last one associate babies with goods (“special delivery” and “imported”) that can be bought. Those with superior resources (i.e., Americans?) can buy these goods.
The middle one de-humanizes Guatamalans. As Resistance notes: What is a Guatling? “Is it like an earthling? A foundling? An underling? A gosling? A yearling?”
All advertise for others that these children are adopted transnationally. And why might an adoptive parent want to advertise such things? Without trivializing how much such parents love their children, we do seem to have a phenomenon in which a transnational adoption is considered a humanitarian good that proves you are not racist, into multiculturalism, and a card-carrying liberal good person (the discourse around Angelina Jolie’s adopted children is part of this).
What do you think the meta-messages are here? iBastard offers a translation over at Racialicious.
Oh and, in the spirit of resistance, check out this parody t-shirt made by iBastard:
Also in dressing your kids and meta-messages: leftish t-shirts for kids, “future M.I.L.F.” t-shirts and the like, “God Hates Fags” t-shirts, sexist t-shirts for kids, trucker girl booties, and more.
Other posts on advertising your politics on your metaphorical sleeve: “I’m Saving The Planet – What Are You Doing?”, “Tough Guys Wear Pink”, “Real Girls Eat Meat”, “True Love Waits”, “I Love My Big Tatas”, and “Use Your Period For Good”.
Why are people of color included in advertising aimed at mostly white people?
1. To associate the product with a racial stereotype.
2. To give a product “color” or “flavor.”
3. To invoke ideas of “hipness,” “modernity,” “progressive” politics and other related ideas.
4. To trigger the idea of human variation itself.
And, 5., as these ads show, to make you think that the company cares about diversity and racial/ethnic equality (whether they do or not).
(found here)
Text: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” (found here)
Next up: How people of color are included, starting with “white-washing.”
Stephen W. sent us this picture of the “Hispanic” foods aisle at a Walmart in Sioux Falls, South Dakota:
Why is this odd?
The word “Hispanic” was actually invented by the U.S. government to mean Spanish-speaking. The government invented it for the census because they wanted to be able to label and identify all Spanish speakers. “Hispanic,” then, unlike the terms “Latino” or “Chicano,” is not an identity that originated among those to whom it applies. Further, though it is sometimes used as a euphemism for “Mexican” or “Latino,” Spanish is only spoken in Latin America because of the conquest of parts of Latin America by Spain.
Given the history and use of this term, what would “Hispanic” food be?! (According to Walmart, it’s salsa and tacos.)
NEW: Another use of the term “Hispanic.” This time on a bag of peanuts passed out on a Southwest Airlines flight.
From a press release by Southwest Airlines about their celebration of Southwest Airlines:
Southwest Airlines shares its passion for Hispanic Heritage Month with our internal and external Customers by hosting celebrations in our Hispanic focus markets. Local Employees kick off the festivities by partnering with local organizations, and at airports, with gate games, Mariachi music, authentic foods, and distributing commemorative T-shirts and lapel pins emblazoned with our Hispanic Heritage Month message “Celebremos Tu Herencia,” “We Celebrate Your Heritage.” Hispanic Heritage month posters also are on display during this month-long celebration. Finally, be on the lookout for Southwest’s Hispanic Heritage Month specialty packaged peanuts! (emphasis mine)
Thanks to Stephen W. for this link, too!
