{"id":16442,"date":"2009-11-27T10:58:05","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T15:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=16442"},"modified":"2012-09-18T23:43:32","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T04:43:32","slug":"stunning-example-of-the-neutrality-of-whiteness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/11\/27\/stunning-example-of-the-neutrality-of-whiteness\/","title":{"rendered":"Stunning Example of the Neutrality of Whiteness"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press, a news service subscribed to by news outlets all over the world, distributed a story<\/a> about the first Obama Administration State Dinner. In the story, sent in by Elisabeth R., Samantha Critchell describes Michelle Obama’s dress as “flesh-colored.”<\/p>\n

\"gown2\"<\/p>\n

[Thanks to Madeline T., Anne Marie, Therese S., and Drugmnky for the screencap!]<\/p>\n

Gee, what could possibly be wrong with calling this dress “flesh-colored”?<\/p>\n

\"APTOPIX<\/p>\n

This is what happens when white people are considered people <\/em>and black people are considered a special kind of people, black people<\/em>.\u00a0 “Flesh-colored” becomes the skin color associated with whites and darker-skinned peoples are left out of the picture altogether.\u00a0 We see this all the time<\/em>.\u00a0 Bandaids, for example, are typically light beige (though they rarely call them “flesh-colored” anymore), as are things like ace bandages.<\/p>\n

See our post on “flesh-colored” for these examples and more<\/a>.\u00a0 See also this post on lotion for “normal to darker skin.”<\/a><\/p>\n

For contrast, see this post about how the generic human in Russian cartoons is colored black instead of white<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Lisa Wade is a\u00a0professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press, a news service subscribed to by news outlets all over the world, distributed a story about the first Obama Administration State Dinner. In the story, sent in by Elisabeth R., Samantha Critchell describes Michelle Obama’s dress as “flesh-colored.” [Thanks to Madeline T., Anne Marie, Therese S., and Drugmnky for the screencap!] Gee, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,373,285,1760,1757,293],"class_list":["post-16442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-color","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16442"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16446,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16442\/revisions\/16446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}