race/ethnicity

I borrowed these two ads from Jim Crow History.  According to the site, Bull Durham tobacco was among the most recognizable trademarks in the world circa 1900.  These two ads include caricatures of “foolish looking or silly acting blacks to draw attention to its product”:

NEW (Dec. ’09)! Pete W. scanned in and sent along a third ad in the series:

For more historical U.S. representations of blacks, see these posts: one, twp, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen.

And for examples of modern reproductions of these stereotypes (literally), see these: one, two, three, four, and five.

Interested in the decision to remove the iconic bull’s scrotum in advertisements? Go here.

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

In this 20 minute video, novelist Chimamanda Adichie describes, with insight and grace, the problem of the “single story.”  She says, “Show a people as one thing, and only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”  Focusing on her experience as an “African” in the U.S. (she is from Nigeria), she also describes her own experiences with realizing that she has heard only a single story, whether of rural Nigerians or Mexicans.

Highly recommended (or read the transcript here):

Via Stuff White People Do.

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

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 Economic Policy Institute defines a “good” job as “one that pays at least 60% of the median household income and also provides health care and retirement benefits.” Based on that definition, here is a breakdown of men holding good jobs in 1979 and 2008, broken down by race/ethnicity (with Native Americans and Asians unfortunately absent):

Notice the clear decrease in the % of men in each group in good jobs between 1979 to 2008. The racial pattern is also striking, if not surprising, with Black and Hispanic men being significantly less likely to have a good job than White men in both 1979 and 2008. Notice the particularly large gap between White and Hispanic men in 2008–over 20 percentage points.

Eloriane sent in a photo shoot for V Magazine (September 2009) that is both fascinating and confounding.  I noticed two things:

First, while the women are more or less fully-clothed, the men are naked.  Really naked.  Well, about as naked as they could be.  But the effect is really eerie, with one model looking like some combination of distressed, surprised, and high in most of her shots.  It’s nothing like our previous post featuring a photo shoot with clothed women and naked men, where the women appear gleeful about the situation.  To be honest, I’m not sure what to make of it, but my instinct is that, for some reason, this is not reversing the gendered power dynamic we typically see.

Coincidentally, Elle P. sent in a Dolce & Gabbana ad to similar effect.  You can see it below as well.

Second, the photo spread is titled “Wild Things” and subtitled “Adopt a Neo-Hippie, Anything Goes Approach to Dressing with Furs, Fringe, and Everything Animal Print.”  Then the photo titles refer to American Indians (“Warrior Princess,” “Navajo Sun,” and maybe “Indigo Girl”), Asians (“Eastern Promises”), Gypsies (“Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves”), and Africans (“Tribal Council”) alongside animals (“Animal Instincts,” and “Wild Things,” of course), and Bohemians (“Boho in Paradise”; more akin to “neo-hippies”?).  So, again, we have the association of people of color with animals and human primitivity (here, here, and here)… even as no actual people of color show up in the photo shoot.

Images after the jump because WAY not safe for work:

more...

Before Sociological Images was widely read (when it was just us and our friends), we used to occasionally title posts “Sigh.”  But these days, what with people following us on twitter, we must offer more imaginative titles.  But really, my instinct was to title this with good ol’ resignation:

Via Racialicious.

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

In the vintage ad below, Sanka sells coffee by joking about how Mexicans (I think) lack good ol’ American capitalist values (text below):

Text:

“How a kind word ruin by beezness”

1. Everyone takes the siesta in the heat of the day, except I, poor Juan.  While all are asleep, the shops are closed.  Except my shop, where I sell pottery to the American tourists for ten times what it costs in America.

2. An American senorita comes one afternoon to buy the pottery.  “How is it that you do not take the siesta?” she asked, speaking that strange language which I have heard called Highschool Spanish.  “Ah, senorita,” I sighed, “I cannot sleep!”

3.  “Is it the coffee!” I explained.  “I love the coffee. I cannot resist it.  But when I drink it with the lunch, then all afternoon I am wide awake!”  She nodded.  “It is good business to be open when other shops are closed!”

4. “I would give all the beezness for a good siesta!” I cried.  “Then you should drink Sanka Coffee,” she said.  “It’s 97% caffein-free [sic], and can’t keep you awake!”  “It is an American trick!”  I scoffed.  “How can it be good coffee?”

5. “It’s wonderful!  A blend of fine Central and South American coffees!” she replied.  “And the Council on Foods of the American Medical Association says: ‘Sanka Coffee is free from caffein [sic] effect, and can be used when other coffee has been forbidden!’ ”

6.  So in gratitude I charge her only five times what the pottery is worth.  Later, I try Sanka Coffee.  Delicious.  And I sleep each day during the afternoon.  My pottery beezness, he is ruin but ah, amigo… how I enjoy the siesta!

See also our post on the Frito Bandito and a vintage Tequila ad.

Found at Vintage Ads.

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

Peter Hessler, at the New Yorker, discusses the practice of outsourcing art to China. According to Hessler, Chinese people, mostly from the countryside, are trained to paint copies of photographs or paintings en masse and those paintings are sold to tourists elsewhere in the world.

Painters pose in their workspace:

Paintings to be sold as souvenirs somewhere in the American West:

Venice?

See more at the slide show.

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

Farrah F. sent us a link to an article on the website for Forward, a newspaper aimed at the American Jewish community. The article looks at the gender gap in pay at Jewish community organizations. According to the article,

…a Forward survey of 75 major American Jewish communal organizations found that fewer than one in six are run by women, and those women are paid 61 cents to every dollar earned by male leaders.

Incomes of leaders of the organizations they surveyed (data is from 2008 unless otherwise specified, and women are highlighted in blue):

The Forward’s survey was drawn from the most recent public records or, if that information wasn’t available, from the organization itself. The median salary for men was $287,702, while the median for women was $175,211, amounting to a ratio of 61 cents to one dollar.

More from the article:

Women comprise about 75% of those employed by federations, advocacy and social service organizations, and religious and educational institutions, but occupy only 14.3% of the top positions. Of the 11 female leaders identified in this survey, three are in interim roles.

In another article, Forward discusses family leave policies at Jewish organizations, finding that relatively few offer paid leave:

UPDATE: A few people have asked why I chose to post about these particular organizations. The short answer is: because that’s what I had. My interest here wasn’t in the religious aspect, but in the gender disparities in volunteer/community organizations; I suspect these same trends occur in a lot of similar organizations, not just Jewish ones. I wish I had info on a more general set, but I so far haven’t been able to find a study like this one, but for a wider array of organizations. If anyone knows of one, I’d love to post it.