A few weeks ago, Vogue Italia’s website produced a paragraph of fashion copy so stunningly insensitive it must be seen to be believed. Thank you, Jezebel, for noticing. First, let’s have a look at the headline:
So, that’s astounding. Boasting the title of first major fashion glossy to publish an all-black model issue (problematic though that may be) and editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani’s initiatives against pro-ana websites, Italian Vogue is commonly thought to be the most progressive of the Vogue family. So you figure, oh god, maybe it’s just a problem with translation, right? Right…?
THE LATEST INTERPRETATION IS PURE FREEDOM.
Italian Vogue has since changed the headline of the post to “Ethnic Earrings” and managed to excise the word “slave” from the body copy (that’s the update above, but Jezebel has its original version). I suppose they forgot to update the tags.
Pricelessly, the copy still concludes: “And the evolution goes on.” Maybe next time we can evolve away from anything resembling this kind of horseshit?
Every time the fashion industry does something racist (and it happens pretty much all the time), we cover it and are inevitably shouted down by a chorus of smarter people who 1) all agree what racism is and 2) believe that [whatever X is] is, in fact, not racist. Moreover, every time we critisize someone or some brand for racism, we are called any number of names–usually along the lines of PC, stupid, or unfamiliar with words (“No, the Klan is racist,” which means that… that other stuff can’t be, we guess?). But our absolute favorite pseudo-argument is, “You’re racist for seeing it that way.” So, we’re cutting that off at the pass.
Because we are huge racists, we wanted to point out Dolce & Gabbana‘s new Spring 2013 earrings: busts of black women with exaggerated red lips, wearing bright turbans embellished with fruit (in the style of traditional blackamoors). We’ll let fellow racists Refinery29 take it away, “The luxury brand debuted a spring ’13 collection that rested heavily on the laurels of a long-lost colonial era, complete with all the cartoonish, debasing, subaltern imagery that would make even your politically incorrect Grandpa think twice.”
Though some of you will squabble about the difference between racism and tastelessness, we are of the opinion that fostering (and profiting off) negative ethnic stereotypes is racist. Especially in the context of a luxury brand owned by white men who’ve created a collection shown exclusively on white models, set against a nebulously “island” backdrop. But we could just be reading into it.
Graduates from the St. Martinville, La., Senior High School Class of 1973 decided that after nearly 40 years, they would stop holding segregated class reunions, but a letter announcing the change included an after party for “white graduates only.”
Michael Kreamer, who is the principal of the Louisiana school, said the letter was brought to his attention on Friday morning. ”It’s disappointing to see something like this,” he said. “The school was really not involved at all in it.”
On Sept. 21, a reception will be held at the school, followed by the homecoming football game, which the letter notes all graduates are welcome to attend. After the game, “white graduates only” are invited to a classmate’s home and are encouraged to bring a “food dish to share.”
Liza Chance, one of the organizers of the event, told ABC affiliate KATC the group had originally planned to have separate parties again this year, but then changed their minds, and that the old plans were sent prematurely. ”I don’t understand why this went the way it did,” she said.
Perhaps brownface and offensive accents aren’t the best way to sell potato chips. Earlier today, an advertisement for Popchips starring Ashton Kutcher as an “Indian” man looking for love was taken down following an online outcry. While Popchips appears to have removed the ad from their Facebook page and YouTube channel, unofficial versions can still be seen.
In the ad, the “Two and a Half Men” star plays a Bollywood producer named Raj. He talks about his dating virtues in a sing-song accent with his face painted brown. Popchips, a potato chip snack, are not mentioned at any point. Three related ads feature Kutcher playing a diva, a hippie, and a biker.
Indian-Americans quickly bashed the ad and Kutcher, who serves as the brand’s “president of pop culture” and developed the $1.5 million ad campaign with Popchips’ CEO, the ad agency Zambezi, and Alison Brod PR.
On his blog, tech entrepreneur Anil Dash called the ad “a hackneyed, unfunny advertisement featuring Kutcher in brownface talking about his romantic options, with the entire punchline being that he’s doing it in a fake-Indian outfit and voice. That’s it, there’s seriously no other gag.”
He added, “if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad ‘funny’ accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course. Make some different decisions.”
The indie hip-hop band Das Racist called out to Kutcher’s Twitter handle: “Hey @aplusk, what’s with the racist brownface video you talentless, pretending to care about sex trafficking piece of s**t?”
Dash later blogged that Popchips CEO Keith Belling offered him a “sincere and contrite” apology over the phone.
As for an official response to the outcry, a Popchips representative told ABCNews.com, “The new popchips worldwide dating parody featuring four characters was created to provoke a few laughs and was never intended to stereotype or offend anyone. At popchips we embrace all types of shapes, flavors and colors, and appreciate all snackers, no matter their race or ethnicity. We hope people can enjoy this in the spirit it was intended.”
Belling also apologized on the company’s blog, writing “i take full responsibility and apologize to anyone we offended.”
Kutcher has yet to tweet about or otherwise comment on the controversy
A photograph of a bumper sticker that features a racist play on words lit up Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere Thursday, adding to what is already shaping up to be one of the most vicious and negative presidential races in history.
The sticker reads “Don’t Re-Nig In 2012″ and sits above a smaller text that reads: “Stop repeat offenders. Don’t re-elect Obama!”
The design seems to have originated from a site called Stumpy’s Stickers, which has since been dismantled. The site featured similar stickers for sale, including a picture of an ape that reads, “Obama 2012″; a drawing of the Confederate flag with the message “If this flag has offended you, then it made my day!”; and another that features members of the Ku Klux Klan and reads, “The Original Boys In The Hood.”
ABC tried to access the website Friday morning, but the email address has been suspended, and the person(s) responsible for the website has not been identified.
The photograph went viral when it was posted to Facebook on Thursday afternoon.
Florence + the Machine released the latest video this past Friday, for “No Light No Light,” the third single from their new album Ceremonials. Since frontwoman Florence Welch is known for her theatrical music video productions, the clip was eagerly awaited by her fans.
The video, directed by Iceland-based duo Arni & Kinski, has already garnered over 800,000 views on Youtube, in addition to generating countless responses over the images in the video. It’s actually slightly astounding how much racist imagery they managed to pack into just four minutes and 15 seconds.
You can watch the video for yourself to get your own interpretation, but if you can’t watch it for whatever reason here’s a brief summary: Welch, a thin white red-haired British woman, is the focal point, but at various points, we see what seems to be an Asian man in blackface, misreprentations of the voodoo religion (which of course inflicts harm on the poor white woman). The overall plot of the video seems to be of a white woman pursued by “darkness,” represented by the aforementioned man in blackface, who ends up falling into “whiteness,” represented by a choir of young white boys in a church. Oh yes, that old trope. Black = evil, white = good. Echoes of British religious imperialism and its violent history of colonization abound. You get the picture.
The video has already attracted criticism from around the blogosphere, and Jezebel’s Dodai Stewart mapped outwhy the representaion of the Voodoo religion in the music video is not only negative, but factually incorrect:
Haitian Vodou is a religion that is very misunderstood. Slaves were brought to the Caribbean against their will and forbidden to practice their traditional African religions as well as forced to convert to the religion of their masters. The Bond movie/Eurocentric/Americanized viewpoint presents Vodou as an evil, primitive version of witchcraft. But it’s a religion like any other, with a moral code, gods and goddesses. Many ceremonies deal with protection from evil spirits.
In addition, the “voodoo doll” itself has been misconstrued. In Haiti, it was traditional to nail small handmade puppets or dolls to trees near graveyards; these small figures were meant to act as messengers to the spirit world, and contact dead loved ones. It’s safe to imagine that European folks didn’t understand this — and assumed an evil intent behind a doll with nails in its body.”
On the other hand, all sorts of defenses and excuses are being pulled out of the hat to try and label this music video as anything other than what it is: racist. Glorifying the white female central character as representing goodness, all while vilifying the evil dark skinned heathen Other. The number of times this has been done in film date back to one of the very first blockbusters, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, and continue on until today with this latest incarnation. But in this age of “colour-blindness” and “post-racial” talk, we confront a fairly new beast: vehement denial.
That’s where a large part of the problem with the discussions around this music video lie – the desire to talk about anything other than race. Fans of Welch’s have offered their own denials, including:
”it’s not blackface, he’s green!”
“It’s not blackface, people in Britain don’t know about blackface.”
“It’s not blackface, it’s a representation of darkness.”
Even fans who will readily agree that this music video is “symbolic” and uses darkness (in the shape of a, lest we forget, a human being, an Asian man in blackface who practices voodoo and chases Welch) to represent “evil” and whiteness to represent “good” will still find ways to vehemently deny it is racist. “Maybe it looks like it could be racist, but it didn’t mean to be!” they say. When it comes to confronting the argument of whether or not the video was “intentionally” racist, I’ll point to minh-ha t. pham’s response for Threadbared to Crystal Renn’s yellowface photoshoot, where she explains:
Racism is so deeply entrenched and pervasive in many societies that everyday racism is often unintentional. On the other hand, what is always intentional is anti-racism. The struggle against racism resists the pervasive ideologies and practices that explicitly and invisibly structure our daily lives (albeit in very different ways that are stratified by race, gender, class, and sexuality). Anti-racism requires intentionality because it’s an act of conscience.
What Pham hits on there is the need to first acknowledge we live in a world where racism and white privilege exist. In the end, the excuses over why “No Light, No Light” is not racist are pointless to entertain if you can’t even begin to acknowledge that. You’d have to live in a very sheltered world to believe that this video is anything other than a giant platter of rehashed racist imagery.
Now, one thing I’m surprised others have not raised in their criticisms of the “No Light, No Light” music video is that this isn’t the first time Welch has been criticized for being “culturally insensitive,” to put it mildly. Her other music videos could hardly be excused as perfect, either.
A quick look at “Dog Days Are Over” (which has over 20 million views on Youtube) features a mishmash of unidentified Othered cultures in the background, such as women in head scarves banging on drums, an all-black gospel choir with silver foreheads, and two blue women (yes, blue). The already very light-skinned Welch is painted an even whiter white, and is featured prominently in the foreground leading the masses of ambiguously ethnic backup dancers in a frenetic crescendo. At the end of the video, they all explode into bursts of bright colours, leaving the “wild” Welch draped in a furry tattered garment, waving a flag.
What these music videos show is the amount of misrepresentations around race that many (white) artists are able to use, all under the guise of “art.” It happens in fashion photoshoots, music videos, films, books, etc on more occasions than one could possibly count. While it happens all the time, that does not make it any more defensible. And being a fan of an artist who makes a misstep and ends up creating something racist, intentionally or not, does not oblige you to running to their defense. Being a card-carrying fan of an artist or musician does not make them infallible.
Discussions about whether or not Welch is personally responsible for this racist music video have cropped up. When you break it down and imagine the number of people who were behind the storyboarding, choreographing, casting and creative direction around this video, it is slightly astounding that not one person raised concerns about how problematic this video is. Many petitions have cropped up, asking that “be pulled, edited, or reshot and she and her label should issue a sincere apology.” In putting forth this music video attached to her album and her persona, Welch has given it her unspoken seal of approval. In this case, she has also simultaneously alienated any number of people of colour and critical folks in her fanbase.
We’ll probably be waiting with bated breath, as Welch nor her label have responded to the public outcry so far.
In the end, the most important and all too often ignored factor in the case of this racist music video is just that: calling it racist. The fact that in 2011, a top-selling young creative artist has released a music video like this one means we still need to have conversations about racism, stereotypes, blackface, and impact that images in music videos like these ones have. Let’s take this opportunity to talk about how to hold artists, including pop stars, accountable for propagating racist imagery. Let’s talk about why blackface is always wrong, about why reductive stereotypical misrepresentations of people of colour are harmful and need to be confronted, and why we still have to unlearn colonial histories and legacies.
A provocative bake sale designed to satirize affirmative action resulted in no fisticuffs Tuesday, but it did prompt a sellout of 300 cupcakes and some heated debate at the University of California at Berkeley, the bake sale organizer said.
“The biggest thing is that no violence broke out. There was no physical situation, which is really great,” Berkeley College Republicans President Shawn Lewis said Tuesday afternoon, as the
bake sale was nearing an end.
“We sold out of cupcakes, and I think we have some (of the 200) cookies left,” Lewis told CNN.
“Beside from selling cupcakes, there was a lot of conversations between people,” Lewis said. “There were some aggressive people who came up with angry things to say, but there was no violence.”
In light of recent threats made against supporters of the group, college Republicans from several other California universities showed up by the carloads and volunteered to help staff the event, held on a campus plaza, Lewis said.
The flagship campus of the University of California system was the state epicenter Tuesday in the debate over affirmative action and college admissions.
On one side, the Berkeley College Republicans hosted their “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” — a satirical event that charged customers different prices based on race and gender.
Yards away, Berkeley’s student government — the Associated Students of the University of California — hosted a phone bank in support of SB 185, state legislation that would allow California universities to consider race, gender, ethnicity and national origin during the admissions process.
Neither side backed down.
During the sale, scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., baked goods were sold to white men for $2, Asian men for $1.50, Latino men for $1, black men for 75 cents and Native American men for 25 cents. All women received 25 cents off those prices.
“We agree that the event is inherently racist, but that is the point,” Lewis wrote in response to upheaval over the bake sale. “It is no more racist than giving an individual an advantage in college admissions based solely on their race (or) gender.”
ASUC President Vishalli Loomba said many students who attended a community meeting Monday night expressed disgust that the bake sale would take place.
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I understand why many people would argue that affirmative action is a form of reverse discrimination, but they don’t take into account the legacy of slavery, landownership, redlining, immigration, legacy admissions, glass ceiling, etc., that plague students and people of color everywhere to this day. Our education system is inherently unjust because it reflects the historical and current discriminatory practices of our existing social structures.
