The Fugees - Fu-gee-la (by stillgotza)

Lauryn Hill is going to jail for tax evasion plus she will pay a $60,000 fine. A true shame for this tremendously talented woman. CNN quotes Hill, who said:

“This wasn’t a life of jet-setting glamour… This was a life of sacrifice with very little time for myself and my children.”

She is apparently still working on a new album. 

Hill’s lawyer also that the law is uneven in the way it sentences celebrities for tax fraud. He cites Willie Nelson as one example. 

No doubt, Hill did the wrong thing, as she does not contest the charges. Celebrities shouldn’t get special treatment, period. The undertone of Hill’s lawyer’s comments, however, is that race might influence the leniency showed to some high profile performers over others.

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.

racialicious:

“While early organizing saw abortion as one of many facets of women’s liberation and reproductive autonomy, in the decades following Roe, this more expansive view has somewhat narrowed. More recently, mainstream feminist organizing around choice has focused predominately on contraceptive services and abortion. In many respects this shift has marginalized the panoply of ways in which reproductive choice and autonomy is constrained in the lives of women of color in a number of discursive spaces and institutional settings. Indeed, feminists of color have long resisted this narrow definition of reproductive choice and autonomy. While emphasizing the central importance of access to contraception and abortion services, women of color activists have also highlighted the ways in which the denial of reproductive capacity and the denigration of their identities as mothers has been central to their subordination in the context of slavery, colonialism and Jim Crow. Women of color also contested the idea that they were unable or incapable of controlling their reproductive destinies. In so doing they mobilized to fight sterilization and other practices that burdened the choice to bear children. Yet for many poor women of color, full reproductive choice and autonomy has remained elusive. Indeed, the reproductive capacities of women of color are often targeted for suppression or derision within contemporary political discourses and official policymaking within a number of institutional settings including the criminal justice and welfare systems. The injuries suffered by women of color in this context, however, are seldom articulated as part of the broader attacks on reproductive rights of women. This targeting of women of color and their families, and the silences that often accompany this targeting, combine to form what I am calling “reproductive profiling.” I use the term “reproductive profiling” to draw upon the ways in which people of color are profiled in the policing or law enforcement context. Similar to the failure of the Fourth Amendment’s privacy rationale to fully extend to victims of racial profiling, individuals subject to reproductive profiling are denied the autonomy and privacy interests guaranteed by the Constitution. As Dorothy Roberts and others have noted, the lives of poor women of color are often public due to frequent interactions with government agencies. Consequently, those who choose to become parents do not benefit from the privacy or dignity rationales represented by Roe and its progeny. In various institutional contexts, such as immigration, prisons and social welfare, poor women of color are subjected to behavior policing policies that limit reproductive autonomy or punish the choice to become a parent. As Michele Goodwin has noted, this “brings private, intimate spaces into the public theatre, creating spectacles of poor, pregnant women and their children; and this public humiliation functions to visually inscribe these women’s place in the social hierarchy.” Moreover, like victims of racial profiling in the policing context, women of color are singled out for suspicion because they are deemed to be in places that they do not belong. Indeed, poor women of color have historically been denied identities as mothers, which are informed by the normative values of the white middle-class. In this way, constraints on their choices to become parents are a reflection of social views that women of color who seek to parent are attempting to access a space that is inappropriate or one that they are not equipped to navigate. The race, gender and class identities of women of color, when attached to their choice to become parents, often raises a suspicion of wrongdoing. Consequently, they confront significant regulation of those choices and are subject to pervasive surveillance.”

—

Priscilla A. Ocen, “Roe and the ‘Reproductive Profiling’ of Women of Color,” Balkinization 1/13/13

“The thing that sucks about Girls and Seinfeld and Sex and the City and every other TV show like them isn’t that they don’t include strong characters focusing on the problems facing blacks and Latinos in America today. The thing that sucks about those shows is that millions of black people look at them and can relate on so many levels to Hannah Horvath and Charlotte York and George Costanza, and yet those characters never look like us. The guys begging for money look like us. The mad black chicks telling white ladies to stay away from their families look like us. Always a gangster, never a rich kid whose parents are both college professors. After a while, the disparity between our affinity for these shows and their lack of affinity towards us puts reality into stark relief: When we look at Lena Dunham and Jerry Seinfeld, we see people with whom we have a lot in common. When they look at us, they see strangers.”

Hipster Racism Runoff And The Search for The Black Costanza by Cord Jefferson @ Gawker

When they look at us, they see strangers.

(via darkdarkgirlvashti)

I was trying to find this quote recently. I don’t think most white people understand how it feels to be thought of as only as a dehumanized stereotype or a token. Never as someone like you who can be relatable and have things in common with you. It’s always a surprise to people online and offline when people find out that I like things that they do, too ; that I’m not just some angry activism-obsessed woman. When people like Lena Dunham  say they don’t know how to write Black people, it’s pretty much saying that she doesn’t think that Black people are also fully complex human beings like her. Sure, there are cultural considerations to be made, but it’s ignoring the fact that people of color are diverse and not a monolith, so it’s not like the only girls who are like her are white.

(via wretchedoftheearth)

(via racialicious)

micropolisnyc: Why aren’t there more minority models in the pages of fashion magazines? The answers are often disturbing, and speak to a form of racial bigotry found in the fashion centers of New York and London — as well as a deep-rooted aesthetic that equates prestige and elitism with stereotypical whiteness (and thin-ness). Here are a few highly-revealing quotes from fashion industry employees, from an analysis of the industry by Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model. Her article is called “Size zero high-end ethnic: Cultural production and the reproduction of culture in fashion modeling,” and was published in 2009. Mears kept the identities of her sources private. “A lot of black girls have got very wide noses… The rest of her face is flat, therefore, in a flat image, your nose, it broadens in a photograph. It’s already wide, it looks humongous in the photograph. I think that’s, there’s an element of that, a lot of very beautiful black girls are moved out by their noses, some of them.” —H, London Agency Director “But it’s also really hard to scout a good black girl. Because they have to have the right nose and the right bottom. Most black girls have wide noses and big bottoms so if you can find that right body and that right face, but it’s hard.” —A, NYC Agency Scout “Okay let’s say Prada. You don’t have a huge amount of black people buying Prada. They can’t afford it. Okay so that’s economics there. So why put a black face? They put a white face, because those are the ones that buy the clothes.” —L, NYC Stylist “We don’t like using the same model too often, but it’s harder to find ethnic girls. And…well, I don’t want to sound racist, but— well for Asians, it’s hard to find tall girls that will fit the clothes because most of them are very petit. For black girls, I guess—black girls have a harder edge kind of look, like if I’m shooting something really edgy, I’ll use a black girl, it always just depends on the clothes.” —A, NYC Magazine Editor “Me personally, in my opinion, there really is no good, good, black girl around. The really good, good black girl around are still the same, and are still the one that everybody wants… It’s very difficult to find one. The agency don’t deliver enough choice to make happy the client [sic].” —O, NYC Casting Director High-res

micropolisnyc:

Why aren’t there more minority models in the pages of fashion magazines?

The answers are often disturbing, and speak to a form of racial bigotry found in the fashion centers of New York and London — as well as a deep-rooted aesthetic that equates prestige and elitism with stereotypical whiteness (and thin-ness).

Here are a few highly-revealing quotes from fashion industry employees, from an analysis of the industry by Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model. Her article is called “Size zero high-end ethnic: Cultural production and the reproduction of culture in fashion modeling,” and was published in 2009. Mears kept the identities of her sources private.

“A lot of black girls have got very wide noses… The rest of her face is flat, therefore, in a flat image, your nose, it broadens in a photograph. It’s already wide, it looks humongous in the photograph. I think that’s, there’s an element of that, a lot of very beautiful black girls are moved out by their noses, some of them.” —H, London Agency Director

“But it’s also really hard to scout a good black girl. Because they have to have the right nose and the right bottom. Most black girls have wide noses and big bottoms so if you can find that right body and that right face, but it’s hard.” —A, NYC Agency Scout

“Okay let’s say Prada. You don’t have a huge amount of black people buying Prada. They can’t afford it. Okay so that’s economics there. So why put a black face? They put a white face, because those are the ones that buy the clothes.” —L, NYC Stylist

“We don’t like using the same model too often, but it’s harder to find ethnic girls. And…well, I don’t want to sound racist, but— well for Asians, it’s hard to find tall girls that will fit the clothes because most of them are very petit. For black girls, I guess—black girls have a harder edge kind of look, like if I’m shooting something really edgy, I’ll use a black girl, it always just depends on the clothes.” —A, NYC Magazine Editor

“Me personally, in my opinion, there really is no good, good, black girl around. The really good, good black girl around are still the same, and are still the one that everybody wants… It’s very difficult to find one. The agency don’t deliver enough choice to make happy the client [sic].” —O, NYC Casting Director

(via racialicious)

“Black sexuality is a taboo subject in American principally because it is a form of black power over which whites have little control — yet its visible manifestations evoke the most visceral of white responses, be it one of seductive obsession or downright disgust. On the one hand, black sexuality among blacks simply does not include whites, nor does it make them a central point of reference. It proceeds as if whites do not exist, as if whites are invisible and simply don’t matter. This form of black sexuality puts black agency center stage with no white presence at all. This can be uncomfortable for white people accustomed to being the custodians of power. On the other hand, black sexuality between blacks and whites proceeds based on underground desires that Americans deny or ignore in public and over which laws have no effective control. In fact, the dominant sexual myths of black women and men portray whites as being “out of control” — seduced, tempted, overcome, over-powered by black bodies. This form of black sexuality makes white passivity the norm — hardly and acceptable self-image for a white-run society”

—

Cornel West

excerpt from “Black Sexuality: The Taboo Subject” in Race Matters,

Second Vintage Books Edition. Boston: Beacon Press (1993): p. 119-131.

Excerpt from p. 125-126

via sociolab (via getaneducation)

Over Half of Native Trans People Have Attempted Suicide

technoccult:

Klint Finley

Depressing: The Advocate reports on a survey by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality. Among the findings: “Fifty-six percent (56%) of American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender respondents reported having attempted suicide compared to 41% of all study respondents.”

Full Story: The Advocate: Over Half of Native Trans People Have Attempted Suicide

(via socialworky)

Thinking critically is at the heart of anybody transforming their life - bell hooks. American cultural theorist bell hooks’ distinguished contribution to sociology has been to unearth the intersecting issues of cultural difference, race and knowledge within feminism. Starting out as a literature professor, hooks would go on to challenge cultural studies in the early 1980s with books such as Ain’t I A Woman?: Black Women and Feminism and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre. Her work shows how women of colour have been marginalised by power structures in society as well as by white feminists who purport to speak about the universal struggle of all women. hooks argued that mainstream feminism silences experiences of race, ethnicity and class.  For the past three decades, hooks has explored the representation of race in popular culture, and how this affects social relations and public education. In the Cultural Transformation video series, bell hooks explains the importance of critical thinking not just for women, but for American society in general. Her work has been adopted and adapted by non-white feminists and cultural theorists around the world. hooks talks about popular culture as a site for pedagogy - this term describes a reiterative relationship of learning from student to teacher and vice versa. She discusses how students she taught in white, privileged schools feel a sense of entitlement about their future in a way that non-white, urban students do not imagine for themselves. hooks’ students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds have jobs, children and other responsibilities that shape their expectation of the future. It is not that hooks’ students from Harlem were any less brilliant, the issue is that they exist in a reality where the education system only deemed to provide them with the basic “tools” to get a job, rather than to enhance their lives in a more profound way. hooks notes that critical thinking can enhance not just these students whose choices are constrained. Critical thinking is just as important for them as it is for middle and upper class people who are materially privileged, but who are experiencing a personal crisis. Critical thinking is about having the language and frames of reference to examine one’s life as well as the world around them and ask questions about the things we take for granted. Why is it okay to watch movies and expect women to be raped and killed as part of the narrative arc? Why do sexually desirable women in Hollywood so often get cast in the role of prostitute who gets beaten up? Why are women characters denied a complex personal journey? Women often have limited dialogue in the full scheme of the story. Men get to be heroes with interesting tales, even when their characters are despicable drunks. Why does Hollywood tell stories the way they do? Why cast a Black kid in the role of a thief? Why is it James Earl Jones who voices the the villain in Star Wars? Who decides that a deep Black male voice represents evil? Why is Spike Lee seen as a “failure” in Hollywood? Does an increased consumption of “Black culture” by white, privileged youth help eliminate social inequality, or is “Blackness” simply a commodity? These questions may seem familiar to students of sociology, but they are not straightforward. hooks argues that it is possible to enjoy big release movies and yet ask questions and problematise what we see on screen. Why was this story told this way? Whose voice is being heard? Who is being silenced?  hooks discusses examples from the 1990s (the series is from 1997), such as Larry Clark’s controversial film Kids; the spectacle of race, gender and crime in the way news is reported (the O.J. Simpson trial); and Madonna’s exploitation of Black men and her sexuality in the pursuit of “greed.” hooks’ comments on rap have vital resonance. hooks explores whether rap culture can be thought as “authentic”, when mainstream rap producers are “pushing a product” - that is, the pursuit of wealth, via images and language that make abuse seem erotic. Rap music also perpetuates a “colour caste system” within Black culture, by elevating the status of lighter-skinned, straight-haired Black women over those with darker skin. Finally, hooks argues that despite an increasing focus on visual forms of communication. reading and writing are incredibly important to critical thinking. hooks says that the books she has read have been at the heart of “major radical interventions” in her personal life. The written word complements visual representations, as hooks reminds us:  We cannot over-value enough the importance of literacy to a culture that is deeply visual. I mean rather than seeing literacy and the visual and our pleasure in the visual as oppositional to one another, I think we have to see them as compatible with one another. I don’t think we will get much further in terms of decolonising our minds. So that we can both resist certain kinds of conservatising representation and at the same time create new and exciting representations. Speaking of major radical interventions - bell hook’s Margin to Centre had an incalculable impact on my ability to think critically. It’s a must read. I draw inspiration from it to this day, as well from hooks’ other works. I’m especially partial to Black Looks: Race and Representation. Watch the Cultural Transformation series: start with part 1 here and part 2 will lead you to the subsequent four videos. I also encourage you to read the PDF transcript to help you digest the wealth of ideas.

Thinking critically is at the heart of anybody transforming their life

- bell hooks.

American cultural theorist bell hooks’ distinguished contribution to sociology has been to unearth the intersecting issues of cultural difference, race and knowledge within feminism. Starting out as a literature professor, hooks would go on to challenge cultural studies in the early 1980s with books such as Ain’t I A Woman?: Black Women and Feminism and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre. Her work shows how women of colour have been marginalised by power structures in society as well as by white feminists who purport to speak about the universal struggle of all women. hooks argued that mainstream feminism silences experiences of race, ethnicity and class. 

For the past three decades, hooks has explored the representation of race in popular culture, and how this affects social relations and public education. In the Cultural Transformation video series, bell hooks explains the importance of critical thinking not just for women, but for American society in general. Her work has been adopted and adapted by non-white feminists and cultural theorists around the world.

hooks talks about popular culture as a site for pedagogy - this term describes a reiterative relationship of learning from student to teacher and vice versa. She discusses how students she taught in white, privileged schools feel a sense of entitlement about their future in a way that non-white, urban students do not imagine for themselves. hooks’ students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds have jobs, children and other responsibilities that shape their expectation of the future. It is not that hooks’ students from Harlem were any less brilliant, the issue is that they exist in a reality where the education system only deemed to provide them with the basic “tools” to get a job, rather than to enhance their lives in a more profound way.

hooks notes that critical thinking can enhance not just these students whose choices are constrained. Critical thinking is just as important for them as it is for middle and upper class people who are materially privileged, but who are experiencing a personal crisis. Critical thinking is about having the language and frames of reference to examine one’s life as well as the world around them and ask questions about the things we take for granted. Why is it okay to watch movies and expect women to be raped and killed as part of the narrative arc? Why do sexually desirable women in Hollywood so often get cast in the role of prostitute who gets beaten up? Why are women characters denied a complex personal journey? Women often have limited dialogue in the full scheme of the story. Men get to be heroes with interesting tales, even when their characters are despicable drunks. Why does Hollywood tell stories the way they do? Why cast a Black kid in the role of a thief? Why is it James Earl Jones who voices the the villain in Star Wars? Who decides that a deep Black male voice represents evil? Why is Spike Lee seen as a “failure” in Hollywood? Does an increased consumption of “Black culture” by white, privileged youth help eliminate social inequality, or is “Blackness” simply a commodity?

These questions may seem familiar to students of sociology, but they are not straightforward. hooks argues that it is possible to enjoy big release movies and yet ask questions and problematise what we see on screen. Why was this story told this way? Whose voice is being heard? Who is being silenced? 

hooks discusses examples from the 1990s (the series is from 1997), such as Larry Clark’s controversial film Kids; the spectacle of race, gender and crime in the way news is reported (the O.J. Simpson trial); and Madonna’s exploitation of Black men and her sexuality in the pursuit of “greed.” hooks’ comments on rap have vital resonance. hooks explores whether rap culture can be thought as “authentic”, when mainstream rap producers are “pushing a product” - that is, the pursuit of wealth, via images and language that make abuse seem erotic. Rap music also perpetuates a “colour caste system” within Black culture, by elevating the status of lighter-skinned, straight-haired Black women over those with darker skin.

Finally, hooks argues that despite an increasing focus on visual forms of communication. reading and writing are incredibly important to critical thinking. hooks says that the books she has read have been at the heart of “major radical interventions” in her personal life. The written word complements visual representations, as hooks reminds us: 

We cannot over-value enough the importance of literacy to a culture that is deeply visual. I mean rather than seeing literacy and the visual and our pleasure in the visual as oppositional to one another, I think we have to see them as compatible with one another. I don’t think we will get much further in terms of decolonising our minds. So that we can both resist certain kinds of conservatising representation and at the same time create new and exciting representations.

Speaking of major radical interventions - bell hook’s Margin to Centre had an incalculable impact on my ability to think critically. It’s a must read. I draw inspiration from it to this day, as well from hooks’ other works. I’m especially partial to Black Looks: Race and Representation.

Watch the Cultural Transformation series: start with part 1 here and part 2 will lead you to the subsequent four videos. I also encourage you to read the PDF transcript to help you digest the wealth of ideas.

“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)

Calling for Contributors

racialicious:

jalwhite:

reclaimingthelatinatag:

reclaimingthepinaytag:

Are you a woman of Philippine descent? Are you tired of your image being slaughtered, demeaned, and sexualized? Do you want to reclaim the Filipina and Pinay tags and fill them with personal experiences as a woman of Philippine descent, Filipina history and culture, and badass women in Philippine history and the present?

If you answered yes to any or all of the above, then join me and become an admin of Reclaiming the Pinay Tag to take back what belongs to us! I’m looking for an array of women of Philippine descent from around the world, whether they are full Filipina or mixed Filipina/XYZ. As long as you have something worthwhile to share and combat the blatant sexuality that floods our tags on a regular basis with I need your help. I can’t do it without you, and our tags can’t do without you, either!

Please contact me if you’re interested and please signal boost.

Followers, please help our sisters over at reclaimingthepinaytag find Contributing Authors. Reblog this post and don’t forget to follow them!

BOOST!

Double boost!

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Andy: We all have ancestors who may have done horrible things in the past but it’s in the past and it’s not our fault so we don’t have to talk about it.

Oscar: The different is, Andy, that you’re the only one here still benefiting from the terrible things your ancestors did.

Nexus of race politics, history and white male privilege get a pithy work out on The Office.

(via marvelous-merbutler)

unapproachableblackchicks: “What began as an artistic curiosity for Deborah Willis turned into a sociological discussion a decade later. Willis is the curator of “Posing Beauty in African American Culture,” an exhibit opening today at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport. “I’d been interested in looking at the history of beauty in African-American culture and how it has been basically ignored as a conversation in art,” Willis said from her office at New York University, where she is the chair of and a professor in the photography and imaging department. “I decided to look at beauty from the aspect of empowering and segregation. During the civil rights movement, there was evidence of people trying to debase black people based on difference,” she continued. “So I wanted to look at beauty in a different way, look how both black and white photographers photographed the black community.” Willis combed through the photos in the archives of museums throughout the country, including the University of Iowa. “When I conducted the research, I was amazed at the array of images that were there but had never circulated in a collection,” she said. She found photographs dating to the 1890s, such as a portrait called “Desert Queen” and a beauty pageant for black women. “Not objectifying women in terms of objects, but finding a sense of self-worth in a 30-year period after slavery,” Willis said. “People were not looking at them as desirable.” The traveling exhibit, which continues through Nov. 4, has been touring the country for four years and spawned a book of the same title. Willis, who will appear at the Figge to discuss the exhibit Sept. 27, said that “idealized beauty” has always been viewed “through the lens of the white woman.” “That’s the negotiating that causes the basic trouble of how they look at the body,” she said. The response to the exhibit, she said, has been beyond what she imagined. “I was thrilled about it, but people were amazed. They were shocked,” she said. “Some people, in terms of blacks, said, ‘I didn’t know we looked like that.’ “It was heartbreaking to hear that.” “

unapproachableblackchicks:

“What began as an artistic curiosity for Deborah Willis turned into a sociological discussion a decade later.

Willis is the curator of “Posing Beauty in African American Culture,” an exhibit opening today at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport.

“I’d been interested in looking at the history of beauty in African-American culture and how it has been basically ignored as a conversation in art,” Willis said from her office at New York University, where she is the chair of and a professor in the photography and imaging department.

“I decided to look at beauty from the aspect of empowering and segregation. During the civil rights movement, there was evidence of people trying to debase black people based on difference,” she continued. “So I wanted to look at beauty in a different way, look how both black and white photographers photographed the black community.”

Willis combed through the photos in the archives of museums throughout the country, including the University of Iowa.

“When I conducted the research, I was amazed at the array of images that were there but had never circulated in a collection,” she said.

She found photographs dating to the 1890s, such as a portrait called “Desert Queen” and a beauty pageant for black women.

“Not objectifying women in terms of objects, but finding a sense of self-worth in a 30-year period after slavery,” Willis said. “People were not looking at them as desirable.”

The traveling exhibit, which continues through Nov. 4, has been touring the country for four years and spawned a book of the same title.

Willis, who will appear at the Figge to discuss the exhibit Sept. 27, said that “idealized beauty” has always been viewed “through the lens of the white woman.”

“That’s the negotiating that causes the basic trouble of how they look at the body,” she said.

The response to the exhibit, she said, has been beyond what she imagined.

“I was thrilled about it, but people were amazed. They were shocked,” she said. “Some people, in terms of blacks, said, ‘I didn’t know we looked like that.’

“It was heartbreaking to hear that.” “

(via racialicious)