{"id":45440,"date":"2012-03-09T12:30:03","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T17:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=45440"},"modified":"2013-11-08T04:48:51","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T09:48:51","slug":"happy-africans-and-smiling-indians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/03\/09\/happy-africans-and-smiling-indians\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Africans and Smiling Indians"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Dominant groups have the power to control representations of less-powerful groups. \u00a0They exert an out-of-proportion influence on their cultural portrayals.<\/p>\n

We’ve previously featured objections to simplistic portrayals of the enormous continent of Africa, especially as a place that is primitive and hopelessly burdened by death, disease, poverty, corruption, and other problems. \u00a0Chimamanda Adichie, for example, objects to\u00a0the \u201csingle story of Africa\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and Binyavanga Wainaina\u00a0tell us\u00a0how not<\/em> to write about Africa<\/a>. \u00a0Elsewhere, we’ve illustrated how the bustling city of Nairobi is portrayed as a savanna with giraffes and elephants<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An organization called Mama Hope<\/a>, sent in by Jennifer C., seeks\u00a0to challenge this perception. \u00a0They want the world to think of Africa as a place of hope and possibility. \u00a0To this end, Mama Hope is producing videos that “…feature the shared traits that make us all human\u2014 the dancing, the singing, the laughter…” \u00a0They look like this:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

The effort reminds me of the “Smiling Indians” and “More Than That” videos, sent in by Katrin and Anna W. \u00a0The first addressed the stereotype of the “stoic Indian,” while the second is designed to counterbalance the common portrayal of reservations as miserable places full of one-dimensional hopeless people (something we are certainly sometimes guilty of<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Smiling Indians:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

More Than That…:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

These videos are examples of the way that the democratizing power of new technologies (both the internet in general and the relatively easy ability to take video and edit) are offering marginalized peoples an opportunity to contest representations by dominant groups.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dominant groups have the power to control representations of less-powerful groups. \u00a0They exert an out-of-proportion influence on their cultural portrayals. We’ve previously featured objections to simplistic portrayals of the enormous continent of Africa, especially as a place that is primitive and hopelessly burdened by death, disease, poverty, corruption, and other problems. \u00a0Chimamanda Adichie, for example, […]<\/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":[129,285,1758,1760,290,140],"class_list":["post-45440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-media","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-american-indiansaboriginals","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-sciencetechnology","tag-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45440","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=45440"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58452,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45440\/revisions\/58452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}