These three confessions, from Post Secret this week, illustrate that “ethnic” hair carries meaning (in the first authenticity, in the second ugliness, and in the third it’s left open) and how some women feel about that:
race/ethnicity
These are Italian candies with chocolate inside. You can read a description of them here (scroll down the page quite a bit). I’m not sure what the point of the shiny dot on the forehead is.
Thanks to Denise H. for finding this image! 
NEW! Kathleen T. sent in this photo she took in Segovia, Spain, of a popsicle that had a stereotypical Asian figure on it:
Notice that the “Asian” face is in the shape of a lemon; Kathleen suggested that the idea might be “lemon = yellow = Asian.”
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Despite all kinds of “truces” and “promises” in the media lately about “leaving race and gender out” of the democratic primaries, gender and race are obviously a part of this presidential election cycle.
But, here’s a newsflash: even when the candidates are all white men, gender and race are STILL a part of the decisions made about who should be president.
Think back to 2004 for a moment– remember all those political cartoons criticizing Kerry for being too “French” (as opposed to American Cowboy) and generally feminizing his image (feminine = bad for politics) in political cartoons.
I’m fascinated by the anti-Hillary Clinton facebook groups. There are dozens of these groups, but four groups have the most members.
- Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich– 30,000+ members
- Anti Hillary Clinton for President ’08– 65,000+ members
- Stop Hillary Clinton: One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary– 700,000+ members
- Life’s a Bitch, Why Vote for One?– 14,000+ members
So this morning I spent some time looking at the images that dominate these groups. The images these groups use to criticize Clinton as a presidential candidate make it pretty clear that sexism is alive and well (beyond the protesters asking Clinton to iron their shirts)– and that gendered ways to talk about politics are as cogent as ever! Here’s a smattering for you– there are so many I couldn’t possibly post them all!
And the intersection of race and gender…
Stereotype threat: The difference in performance measured when the belief that people like you (blacks, women, etc) are worse at a particular task than the comparison group (whites, men, etc) is made salient.
The left side of the bar graph is the performance of blacks and whites on a task (on which whites are stereotypically believed to be superior) when stereotype threat is activated (blacks and whites are reminded of the stereotype in some way). The right side of the bar graph is the performance of blacks and whites on the same task when the stereotype remains unactivated. Note the remarkable difference. This demonstrates the ways in which stereotypes, when made salient, affect our performances on “objective” tests.
From: The Effects of Stereotype Threat on the Standardized Test Performance of College Students by J Aronson, CM Steelel, MF Salinas, MJ Lustina. In Readings About the Social Animal, 8th edition, edited by E. Aronson. Stolen from Wikipedia.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbcmPe0z3Sc[/youtube] While this video is more activist-y than scholarly, I think it might be useful as a way to demonstrate that our taken-for-granted categories (whether they be based on religion, race, ethnicity, gender or otherwise) are falsely homogeneous.
Anti-gun control propaganda (found here) aimed at EVERYBODY.
What you might expect from the pro-gun lobby:
For kids!
Pro-gun feminism?
Guns are for fags:
Gun control is racist:
Bill F. sent in this one. What’s interesting about this image is the comment on masculinity–the implication is that “pacifist” men (whatever “pacifist” is taken to mean) aren’t “real” men because they can’t or won’t fulfill their role of protecting women. The gun becomes a replacement for sissified men.
Funky Frum: Aimed at conservative Jews
Marabo: For Muslim women
Modest by Design: Formal wear; tagline is “Clothing your father would approve of.”
Shade: Aimed at Mormons
These could be useful in all kinds of ways–for instance, is it necessarily oppressive to dress “modestly”? Is there a difference in the tone of these websites (i.e., providing choice vs. “clothing your father would approve of”)? Do we view the website aimed at Muslim women differently than the others?
This campaign ad from 1988 is part of the larger politicization of the black underclass. “Willie Horton” and the “welfare queen” both emerged as symbols during this period with which to demonize poor blacks for political clout. Ultimately, using the name Willie Horton became a powerful tool to criticize politicians for being weak on crime and not protecting the innocent white population from the guilty black population.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y[/youtube]
Ultimately, increasing toughness of the criminal justice system led to a situation, today, where about 1/2 of all black men are in the prison system. See an interesting entry on Willie Horton on wikipedia here.
These are Italian candies with chocolate inside. You can read a description of them here (scroll down the page quite a bit). I’m not sure what the point of the shiny dot on the forehead is.
Thanks to Denise H. for finding this image! 
NEW! Kathleen T. sent in this photo she took in Segovia, Spain, of a popsicle that had a stereotypical Asian figure on it:
Notice that the “Asian” face is in the shape of a lemon; Kathleen suggested that the idea might be “lemon = yellow = Asian.”
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Despite all kinds of “truces” and “promises” in the media lately about “leaving race and gender out” of the democratic primaries, gender and race are obviously a part of this presidential election cycle.
But, here’s a newsflash: even when the candidates are all white men, gender and race are STILL a part of the decisions made about who should be president.
Think back to 2004 for a moment– remember all those political cartoons criticizing Kerry for being too “French” (as opposed to American Cowboy) and generally feminizing his image (feminine = bad for politics) in political cartoons.
I’m fascinated by the anti-Hillary Clinton facebook groups. There are dozens of these groups, but four groups have the most members.
- Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich– 30,000+ members
- Anti Hillary Clinton for President ’08– 65,000+ members
- Stop Hillary Clinton: One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary– 700,000+ members
- Life’s a Bitch, Why Vote for One?– 14,000+ members
So this morning I spent some time looking at the images that dominate these groups. The images these groups use to criticize Clinton as a presidential candidate make it pretty clear that sexism is alive and well (beyond the protesters asking Clinton to iron their shirts)– and that gendered ways to talk about politics are as cogent as ever! Here’s a smattering for you– there are so many I couldn’t possibly post them all!
And the intersection of race and gender…
Stereotype threat: The difference in performance measured when the belief that people like you (blacks, women, etc) are worse at a particular task than the comparison group (whites, men, etc) is made salient.
The left side of the bar graph is the performance of blacks and whites on a task (on which whites are stereotypically believed to be superior) when stereotype threat is activated (blacks and whites are reminded of the stereotype in some way). The right side of the bar graph is the performance of blacks and whites on the same task when the stereotype remains unactivated. Note the remarkable difference. This demonstrates the ways in which stereotypes, when made salient, affect our performances on “objective” tests.
From: The Effects of Stereotype Threat on the Standardized Test Performance of College Students by J Aronson, CM Steelel, MF Salinas, MJ Lustina. In Readings About the Social Animal, 8th edition, edited by E. Aronson. Stolen from Wikipedia.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbcmPe0z3Sc[/youtube] While this video is more activist-y than scholarly, I think it might be useful as a way to demonstrate that our taken-for-granted categories (whether they be based on religion, race, ethnicity, gender or otherwise) are falsely homogeneous.
Anti-gun control propaganda (found here) aimed at EVERYBODY.
What you might expect from the pro-gun lobby:
For kids!
Pro-gun feminism?
Guns are for fags:
Gun control is racist:
Bill F. sent in this one. What’s interesting about this image is the comment on masculinity–the implication is that “pacifist” men (whatever “pacifist” is taken to mean) aren’t “real” men because they can’t or won’t fulfill their role of protecting women. The gun becomes a replacement for sissified men.
Funky Frum: Aimed at conservative Jews
Marabo: For Muslim women
Modest by Design: Formal wear; tagline is “Clothing your father would approve of.”
Shade: Aimed at Mormons
These could be useful in all kinds of ways–for instance, is it necessarily oppressive to dress “modestly”? Is there a difference in the tone of these websites (i.e., providing choice vs. “clothing your father would approve of”)? Do we view the website aimed at Muslim women differently than the others?
This campaign ad from 1988 is part of the larger politicization of the black underclass. “Willie Horton” and the “welfare queen” both emerged as symbols during this period with which to demonize poor blacks for political clout. Ultimately, using the name Willie Horton became a powerful tool to criticize politicians for being weak on crime and not protecting the innocent white population from the guilty black population.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y[/youtube]
Ultimately, increasing toughness of the criminal justice system led to a situation, today, where about 1/2 of all black men are in the prison system. See an interesting entry on Willie Horton on wikipedia here.