Sociological Images

Comments

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  OP Minded 9:01 am on September 15, 2008 | # | Reply

  I disagree.

  Looks like a straight forward caricature of the candidate Obama. I don’t see anything racist about it at all. Also, I don’t see the “Aunt Jemima styling of the box”. Looks like a cereal box to me.

  Further, what does Aunt Jemima have to do with waffles?

  Seems to me that this post raises two issues:

  - Is it possible to do a cartoon caricature of a black candidate without it being called racist?
  - The “Aunt Jemima” connection is a square peg in a round hole.

• Sociological Images » WHAT WE’VE BEEN UP TO BEHIND YOUR BACK (SEPTEMBER 2008) 9:34 am on September 15, 2008 | # | Reply

  [...] Comments OP Minded on FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAILMarla on “THIS IS NOT AN AD ABOUT CARS, AND IT’S NOT SEXIST, [...]

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  aimee 9:46 am on September 15, 2008 | # | Reply

  @OP Minded

  How could you not see this as racist? If it wasn’t so obviously a spoof on Aunt Jemima why is it that the Values Forum pulled the item from sale? http://www.star-telegram.com/464/story/907001.html (sorry I don’t know how to make live links)

  And Aunt Jemima does make waffle mixes. Just google it and you’ll find out.

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  OP Minded 8:32 am on September 17, 2008 | # | Reply

  Circular argument “If it wasn’t so obviously a spoof on Aunt Jemima why is it that the Values Forum pulled the item from sale?”

  This has nothing to do with Aunt Jemima. There is not a single thing on the box that even suggests it. Have seen anyone present anything on the box that is racist.

  The caricature is pretty straightforward and doesn’t hint at racism either. Again, I ask “Is it possible to do a cartoon caricature of a black candidate without it being called racist?”

• Sociological Images » NON-RACIST CARICATURE 12:46 am on October 9, 2008 | # | Reply

  [...] Obama that look suspiciously like those popular during and immediately after slavery (see here, here, and here). One common critique of our critique went something like this, “Well, if [...]

• Sociological Images » SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ROUND-UP! 3:36 am on November 4, 2008 | # | Reply

  [...] certainly brought racial tensions front and center. We highlighted two racist caricatures of Obama: on a waffles box and as a cannibal. We also discussed the cover of The New Yorker on which Barack and Michelle Obama [...]

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  Steve 12:09 pm on February 17, 2009 | # | Reply

  Sorry, I don’t agree either. Racism is everywhere if you’re going to look as hard for it as you are. I fail to see how an image of a black person in some of the situations you post are racist. I would suggest that you are looking so hard for racism that you’re finding it in places it just doesn’t exist. Either that or you’re just making too big a deal about it. You know, the bigger deal you make of it, the bigger deal it is – like the white guy hanging out with his black friends who says “My boss is such a slave driver” and then spends hours apologising for saying “slave” when no one else had even thought it was an issue.

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  Anonymous 4:26 pm on April 8, 2009 | # | Reply

  OP minded is ignorant

• Sociological Images » The Sonia Sotomayor National Review Cover 10:40 am on June 8, 2009 | # | Reply

  [...] game in contemporary U.S. politics.  The last election should have made this abundantly clear (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for examples). tags: [...]

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  Sean 10:17 pm on January 16, 2010 | # | Reply

  Steve, I think that you are right. Anti-racist folks WILL find racism everywhere if we look for it, because it is there. Since the term “race” was coined with it’s current definition some 400 years ago, racism has seeped into every corner and facet of life in Europe and the U.S., and has shaped our culture and society as fundamentally as any other social construct ever could.

  I’m also willing to run with your question, and say that it would be VERY HARD to make caricatures of black candidates without those images being racist. Over the past 400-some years people of colour have been depicted in many different caricatures, all of them associated with very real and often violent, brutal oppression. And evoking any of those images is racist because it evokes those associated oppressions, even if that wasn’t the conscious intention of the creator.

  That last distinction is really important; someone can be racist without being a bigot, or having any mean-spirited intent- and something that seems totally innocuous to one person might strike a really sensitive, hurtful chord with another.

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    Patrick 11:13 pm on January 24, 2010 | # | Reply

    Sean:

    Someone can say something that is racially insensitive unintentionally, but racism is necessarily something predicated on the *basis* of race.

    So if I make a caricature of a black candidate on the basis of anything BUT race, and the caricature emphasizes parts of his/her countenance in a racially offensive manner, I have not “been racist”.

    That, too, is an important distinction to make.

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      Sean 1:34 am on January 25, 2010 | # | Reply

      I’m not buying it… First, I would argue that how we view people is so tinted by the lens of race that even unintentional portrayal of a black candidate along traditional racist tropes/stereotypes is reflective of being raised in a racist society. We are trained to see people as being of a specific race, and attach all kinds of stereotypes (behavioral and physical), and that is so often subconscious. That doesn’t mean it’s not racist, but neither does it mean that the person in question is “Bad.”

      Secondly, even if you reject that argument, I think that a caricature, drawn with no racist/bigoted intent, that invokes any number of racist stereotypes (has an overly broad nose, nappy hair, etc) will have the effect of reinforcing racism and racist attitudes and systems, and offending/oppressing people of colour. And as far as I’m concerned, that real measurable effect renders any distinction via intent academic.

      In short:
      I don’t really care if you’re trying to be racist or not, if you publish an image of Obama as a monkey, that image is RACIST. And if you’re willing to publish that, you are racist by extension.

      We are all raised to be racists, and until we take the time and effort to really begin to unlearn that (and even after; we all mess up), we will act it out and perpetuate the system(s). Until we admit we have a problem, and the full extent of it, we cannot hope to fight it.