Racist Humour in Australian Advertising: Reflections from the Sociology of Whiteness

Below is a great post by sunili on “casual racism” in a recent advertising campaign that has thankfully been banned by tv networks. To situate it for non-Australian readers, here’s the background. There is an electronics entrepreneur in Australia called Dick Smith. His company is Australian-owned and his advertising campaigns often rest on notions of patriotism. His latest ad was an attempt to cash in on Australia Day, coming up on the 26th of January. It has caused tremendous controversy because it is based upon sexist and racist “jokes.” The ad features cringe-worthy dick jokes as well as asylum seekers literally arriving on Australian shores. A stereotypical Afghan/Islamic man is handed a Dick Smith’s food product, as Smith says “And the taste is a beauty, why else would thousands be trying to get here?” The “asylum seeker” looks to the camera and says “I love Mr Dickssss.”

Dick Smith has defended the sexism and racism in his ads to the Sydney Morning Herald, saying:

one of the reasons that asylum seekers come here [to Australia] is because we have good food. So I can’t see what’s really wrong with that.

Guess what? Asylum seekers come to Australia for asylum, to escape prosecution and political turmoil, not to eat Australian food specifically and certainly not to help Dick Smith reduce their plight into a racist skit.

The entire ad campaign is offensive and ridiculous, but the asylum seeker angle is socially irresponsible, given that Australia has an ongoing debate about asylum seekers, which are based on fear and racism. Negative stereotypes, including those perpetuated by “jokes,” have a real consequence on the lives of refugees in Australia, including on their employment prospects. Media that replicates race and gender-based “jokes” actually rest on racist and sexist notions, as the humour is a direct interaction with cultural stereotypes.

Sunili has written to the ad director, who defended the Dick Smith ad saying it was not meant to be racist. As Sunili points out, racism, whether intended or not, whether as a joke or as malice, is still racism:

There are two huge problems with casual racism and racist jokes:

jokes that are based on racist stereotypes and the normalisation of casual racism trivialises the huge problem of what you describe “malicious” racism and the harm that that racism causes because people go “oh c’mon it’s just a joke love, get over it!” when the basis of that joke is something that is deeply not funny and terribly hurtful; and

making jokes and then defending jokes that are based on racist stereotypes normalise a harmful practice that has and continues to effect a lot of your fellow Australians, and it gives the really vocal, nasty, malicious element of the community the ammunition it wants to make racist jokes in a nasty, malicious way.

I have discussed the sociology of “unintentional racism” with respect to history and music on my other blog. I noted that the reason why non-white people, particularly those in positions of privilege, are able to claim that they fail to see racism in their words or actions is because racism is institutionalised. It is so firmly entrenched in society, that people claim not to be aware of it, even when they participate in it. This is why whiteness studies are so important: people who belong to a dominant white group have trouble owning up to racist discourses. As Dick Smith says, “I can’t see what’s really wrong” with his unintentional racism. 

Check out Ruth Frankenberg’s work on white American women and Margaret Wetherell and Jonathan Potter’s work on racist discourses in New Zealand. These studies show that ordinary folk who see themselves as highly tolerant and forward- thinking citizens actually use racist language and they replicate racist ideologies without being able to discuss this as racism.

You should also read Sunili’s post in full.

sunili:

Dick Smith is a bit of a tool but he made this ad for his food products for Straya Day and it’s awful and racist and you can google it if you want but I sure as hell will not be linking to it.

I contacted the director of the ad via Twitter and engaged in a bit of discussion about how problematic it was. He responded, firstly by calling me “Sunil”, EPIC AWKWARD TURTLE, but then saying that the ad wasn’t racist because there was no malicious intent to be racist.

This was my response to him.

Read More

HT @26pgt for the link to sunili’s post.

“With the expansion of European and U.S. colonialism into Asia and Africa in the last half of the nineteenth century, new emphases were added to the prevailing racial frame. One relatively new emphasis was “teleological racism”—the view that non-European peoples, including Africans, had been created as inferior so that they could serve, and be civilized by, whites. A famous statement of this is Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem, “The White Man’s Burden” (“Take up the White Man’s burden/ Send forth the best ye breed”). From Kipling’s perspective whites had a missionary obligation to help “inferior races,” termed in the poem as “half-devil, half-child.”These white-racist formulations explained not only the character and conditions of those oppressed but also celebrated whites as especially civilized, Christian, powerful, and generous toward those conquered. Variations on this old racist framing have long rationalized the oppressive policies directed by Western corporations and governments at peoples of color across the globe, to the present day.”

Joe Feagin

the white savior complex among activists is rooted in the white man’s burden

(via wretchedoftheearth)

(via sociolab)

Dominant discourse of whiteness in The Economist

Economist-Staff is a website whose sole purpose is to point out white cultural dominance within The Economist, one of the world’s most respected economic publications. The Economist magazine shapes its global economic analyses through highly specific racial, ethnic and linguistic lenses.
The Economist-Staff website began in response to an article in The Economist that attempted to answer “Why are Korean women so good at golf?” The Economist Staff points out that is a problematic question to begin with, let alone the article itself, which reproduces racial and ethnic stereotypes. Check out the rest of the Economist-Staff site, which refutes The Economist’s claims that the magazine is about diversity, and that it is “the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability”. In the graphics below, we see that one way through which whiteness discourses are perpetuated in the magazine is through the English language.

Languages spoken by The Economist Editorial Staff

*Language list is based on the selection from the staff directory

Specialised Countries & Languages Spoken by Staff


9 of 9
United Kingdom
specialists speak
English

2 of 2
Russia
specialists speak
Russian

3 of 7
China
specialists speak
Chinese

0 of 3
Japan
specialists speak
Japanese

2 of 6
Middle East & North Africa
specialists speak
Arabic
•
1 of 6
speak
Hebrew
•
1 of 6
speak
Persian

0 of 5
Sub-Saharan Africa
specialists speak
Afrikaans
•
3 of 5
speak
French
•
0 of 5
speak
Swahili

3 of 6
Latin & South America
specialists speak
Portuguese
•
4 of 6
speak
Spanish

0 of 4
South Asia
specialists speak
Bengali
•
4 of 4
speak
English
•
0 of 4
speak
Hindi
•
0 of 4
speak
Gujarati

*Language lists are alphabetically displayed, and based on the selection from the staff directory

Source: Economist-Staff.

Peggy McIntosh talks about the origins for her article on white privilege Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

undercoverterrorist: osobigbear: http://unfaircampaign.org Is white skin really fair skin? Something as basic as the color of our skin has shaped our lives, opened doors, put us at the head of the line. Granted us privileges we don’t even realize. We don’t experience the daily disadvantages - the looks, the fear, the hassles - that thrive in the unspoken world of white entitlement. And that’s unfair. High-res

undercoverterrorist:

osobigbear:

http://unfaircampaign.org

Is white skin really fair skin?

Something as basic as the color of our skin has shaped our lives, opened doors, put us at the head of the line.

Granted us privileges we don’t even realize.

We don’t experience the daily disadvantages - the looks, the fear, the hassles - that thrive in the unspoken world of white entitlement.

And that’s unfair.

(via sociolab)

Anime and the Social Construction of Race

A common misconception about anime cartoons amongst uninitiated audiences in majority-English-speaking countries is that anime characters are drawn to look ‘White’ rather than ‘Asian’. First of all, neither of terms are factual fixed categories - they are social constructions. That is, the meaning attached to race, whether ‘White’, ‘Black’, ‘Asian’ and so on, and the groups classified under these labels, change from one society to another, depending upon culture, time and place.

In an excellent exploration of the social construction of race in popular culture, sociologist Julian Abagond shows that Japanese animators do not, in fact, draw anime characters to personify their aspiration to be ‘white’. Instead, these characters reflect the animators’ own cultural biases - which is that Japanese people are the prototype model of the ‘default human being’. Abagond writes in Sociological Images:


If I draw a stick figure, most Americans will assume that it is a white man. Because to them that is the Default Human Being. For them to think it is a woman I have to add a dress or long hair; for Asian, I have to add slanted eyes; for black, I add kinky hair or brown skin. Etc.

The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed.

Americans apply this thinking to Japanese drawings. But to the Japanese the Default Human Being is Japanese! So they feel no need to make their characters “look Asian”. They just have to make them look like people and everyone in Japan will assume they are Japanese – no matter how improbable their physical appearance.

You see the same thing in America: After all, why do people think Marge Simpson is white? Look at her skin: it is yellow. Look at her hair: it is a blue Afro. But the Default Human Being thing is so strong that lacking other clear, stereotyped signs of being either black or Asian she defaults to white…

When you think about it there is nothing particularly white about how anime characters look:huge round eyes – no one looks like that, not even white people (even though that style of drawing eyes does go back to Betty Boop).

  • yellow hair – but they also have blue hair and green hair and all the rest. Therefore hair colour is not about being true to life.
  • small noses – compared to the rest of the world whites have long noses that stick out.
  • white skin – but many Japanese have skin just as pale and white as most White Americans…

Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it.  But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else.

As Abagond’s analysis shows, perceptions of race and gender influence how people ‘read’, understand and draw meaning from animation. For Japanese animators, their characters reflect their view of normality - that everyone in their creation is Japanese (or Korean or Chinese or wherever the anime is produced). Audiences that have an uncritical view of race and Whiteness presume that ‘Asian’ drawings should look ‘Asian’. Yet this term - Asian - means different things to different groups. In Japan, the category of Asian is not very meaningful. Instead, mainstream Japanese culture portrays the Japanese people as the ‘default human being’. Gender and class also affect how this default human being is imagined (usually male, affluent and lean).

Just all art forms embody the biases and taken-for-granted cultural assumptions about the world, what audiences see in anime drawings are mediated by the ethnocentrism of the animators and audiences. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s group is superior to others. Viewers who think Japanese anime characters are trying to look ‘White’ are therefore viewing this artform through ethnocentrism.

Credit
Quotation originally from Abagond’s blog, via Sociological Images.

Image of Jubei from Ninja Scroll from Jinni.

“Every year new groups organize to demand their ‘rights,’” he continued. “White people who organize and expect the same attention as other groups are quickly and viciously condemned as dangerous bigots. Hispanic, black, and Jewish caucuses can exist in the U.S. Congress, but not a white caucus, demonstrating the absurdity of this approach for achieving rights for everyone.”

From Ron Paul’s 1987 book Freedom Under Siege. 

Let me guess, Lew Rockwell wrote Ron Paul’s book too? 

(via paxamericana)

Crocodile tears, diamond studded shit, poor white people, oh the horror, etc.

(via cwnl)

(via ikenbot)