{"id":2210,"date":"2008-08-24T10:59:18","date_gmt":"2008-08-24T15:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=2210"},"modified":"2010-07-31T03:48:17","modified_gmt":"2010-07-31T08:48:17","slug":"vintage-ads-depict-african-americans-as-dirty-simpletons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/08\/24\/vintage-ads-depict-african-americans-as-dirty-simpletons\/","title":{"rendered":"Vintage Ads Depict African Americans as Dirty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\">Ben O. forwarded this ad for Fairy Soap (found <a href=\"http:\/\/pzrservices.typepad.com\/vintageadvertising\/2008\/01\/very-offensive.html\">here<\/a>). It plays into the idea that African Americans are  dirty and either lazy or stupid (since they don&#8217;t bother to wash their  children), but that enlightened, kindly, clean <em>whites<\/em> can help  them. It would make a good accompaniment to the chapter &#8220;Soft-Soaping  Empire: Commodity Racism and Imperial Advertising&#8221; in <em>Imperial  Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest<\/em>, by  Anne McClintock.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/08\/fairbanksfairysoap.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2212 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/08\/fairbanksfairysoap.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"515\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE:<\/strong> In a comment, Brendon proposed a reading I didn&#8217;t think of:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The second ad is troubling, but my interpretation of it wasn&#8217;t that the ad was implying that African Americans are dirty &#8211; it&#8217;s implying that the young white girl believes the black girl is covered in dirt, which is the only reason why the black girl doesn&#8217;t have the white skin she does. It&#8217;s about the &#8216;folly&#8217; of youth &#8211; this girl isn&#8217;t versed in the discourse of racial difference yet!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, Eric points out that the &#8220;cutesy&#8221; element is undermined by the fact that the ad was made by adults who, unless we&#8217;re both totally wrong, didn&#8217;t hold such an &#8220;innocent&#8221; view of the differences between African Americans and Whites.<\/p>\n<p>Also, as a commenter pointed out, given changes in hairstyles and dress for children over time, it may be those are boys, not girls.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000\"><strong>NEW (July &#8217;10)! <\/strong><\/span>Monica Y. sent along another example, this one an ad for Vinolia Soap:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/08\/1.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-26232\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/08\/1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"328\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben O. forwarded this ad for Fairy Soap (found here). It plays into the idea that African Americans are dirty and either lazy or stupid (since they don&#8217;t bother to wash their children), but that enlightened, kindly, clean whites can help them. It would make a good accompaniment to the chapter &#8220;Soft-Soaping Empire: Commodity Racism [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[257,279,232,2124,253,283,285,1760,1757,23705],"class_list":["post-2210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hygiene","tag-objectification","tag-cultural-imperialismneocolonialism","tag-foodagriculture","tag-history","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-vintage-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210","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\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2210"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210\/revisions\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}