The term "whitewashed" is often used today to describe someone who acts like a white person (whatever that's supposed to mean, considering that Caucasians can come from multiple cultures as well). In the days of Tom Sawyer, it used to refer to white paint made using chalk and lime that was often used to paint houses.
Well, now that old definition has some new meaning. A mural painted on the wall of an elementary school in Prescott, Arizona included the faces of children who actually attend the school. The school has a diverse ethnic mix, and the mural as a matter of course included white, black, and brown faces.
Some members of the community (beginning with a city councilman) apparently took offense to that. While the artists and the children helping them were painting the mural, they drove by the school screaming racist slurs for two months. Don't forget, this is an elementary school. Since when has shouting racist slurs at children become the best way to exercise your right to free speech?
In the end, the principal of the school decided the best way to handle the matter would be to ask the artists to lighten up the color of the children's skin. Make them more white, in other words.
And also don't forget that the faces in the mural are those of real kids. Isn't that a great message to send to your children? We don't like the skin color you were born with. If you manage to make it a little bit lighter, though, we might tolerate you a little better.
It seems like nowadays I'm reading about racism and discrimination every day. I live in the Bay Area, where most people respect other skin tones, at least in public. So I haven't been as exposed to this. And it sickens me that these problems are still out there. I thought we'd gotten past slavery and Jim Crowe. Hell, I thought we'd even gotten past World War II and Hitler and the Nazis, where we were fighting on the side of equality (kind of) and justice. What happened?
Showing posts with label culture clash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture clash. Show all posts
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Try To Feel Again
Are pictures of suffering still effective in raising emotions in our society? Have we all become desensitized by the images of violence and death and victimization we see everyday, on TV, on the internet?
Yes and no. I think pictures can still affect us. A picture of a single starving child is still much better at encouraging people to be generous than figures on the debilitating reach of malnourishment throughout the world.
But I think our attention spans have shortened to the point that we no longer think about what the pictures mean (I mean, this is why I use short paragraphs). This is not to say that we think or feel nothing. We feel our initial reaction, our gut instinct of awe or sadness or pity as our mind processes the situation represented by the picture. Look at this photograph:
What was your reaction upon seeing this photo? Mine was initially, 'Oh, another starving child, how sad.' My attention was divided between this and the text and what the professor was saying, but it still seems to provide support for the "we are desensitized" theory, right? As the picture continued to stay up on the Powerpoint, however, I kept looking at it. And then I saw the vulture.
I was transfixed by horror. All I could think was 'Oh my god.'
But if the professor had put the picture on the screen and flipped to the next slide with a few words, leaving it up only for a few seconds, I wouldn't have understood the context. Then again though, isn't that the kind of environment we usually see these pictures in? On TV, with the anchor or a narrator speaking, and some sort of text every now and then, a quick flash of a picture in between to highlight the subject? Or online in an article, surrounded by text and flashing click-me ads?
Maybe we don't really look at the world around us anymore, and the same applies to these photographs. We're too engrossed in ourselves and the people around us, and even the world around us - but all in the form of our mental construction of these things. You could argue that everything we see is a mental construction, that's true, but my point is that we see what we expect to in pictures, not what's actually going on.
So I have an assignment for you. It's probably easiest to do online, when you have some control over the pictures you see. Next time you see a photograph that invokes some kind of gut reaction in you, stop and look more closely at it. Notice the details, ask where this was taken, who it was taken by, what the situation was, who the people are. Find out not just what the photographer took a picture of, but what she meant to show.
Yes and no. I think pictures can still affect us. A picture of a single starving child is still much better at encouraging people to be generous than figures on the debilitating reach of malnourishment throughout the world.
But I think our attention spans have shortened to the point that we no longer think about what the pictures mean (I mean, this is why I use short paragraphs). This is not to say that we think or feel nothing. We feel our initial reaction, our gut instinct of awe or sadness or pity as our mind processes the situation represented by the picture. Look at this photograph:
What was your reaction upon seeing this photo? Mine was initially, 'Oh, another starving child, how sad.' My attention was divided between this and the text and what the professor was saying, but it still seems to provide support for the "we are desensitized" theory, right? As the picture continued to stay up on the Powerpoint, however, I kept looking at it. And then I saw the vulture.
I was transfixed by horror. All I could think was 'Oh my god.'
But if the professor had put the picture on the screen and flipped to the next slide with a few words, leaving it up only for a few seconds, I wouldn't have understood the context. Then again though, isn't that the kind of environment we usually see these pictures in? On TV, with the anchor or a narrator speaking, and some sort of text every now and then, a quick flash of a picture in between to highlight the subject? Or online in an article, surrounded by text and flashing click-me ads?
Maybe we don't really look at the world around us anymore, and the same applies to these photographs. We're too engrossed in ourselves and the people around us, and even the world around us - but all in the form of our mental construction of these things. You could argue that everything we see is a mental construction, that's true, but my point is that we see what we expect to in pictures, not what's actually going on.
So I have an assignment for you. It's probably easiest to do online, when you have some control over the pictures you see. Next time you see a photograph that invokes some kind of gut reaction in you, stop and look more closely at it. Notice the details, ask where this was taken, who it was taken by, what the situation was, who the people are. Find out not just what the photographer took a picture of, but what she meant to show.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Other
A concept we learned about in my Global Poverty class (and high school history classes previous) was that of the "Other." Not the kind from the Nicole Kidman movie, although it does have a great plot twist, but the kind that's important in colonialism, development, and our conception of ourselves.
We tend to define ourselves as individuals and as a society by what we are not. We are civilized. What does that mean? It means we are not savages. We are modern, because we are moving beyond tradition.
It was a large part of colonialism. Imperialists (mainly Europeans) defined themselves as modern in comparison to the "native" people of the places they occupied. There had to be a standard for comparison. The native culture was to be kept in its traditional, "pure" form, as though in a museum.
The same thing occurs today with development, with anthropological and sociological studies of other countries. Unless you are originally from that country (and even then sometimes, because you are entering in a professional capacity), you see the place from an outsider perspective. You look at the differences between yourself and them, you other-ize the people whom you are studying or helping, because that's how you remember who you are. Wherever there are differences, unfortunately, there's a hierarchy.
One of the places this is most evident is in the status of women in the West. According to Lila Abu-Lughod, "it has been accepted that, at least in the modern West, women have been the other to men's self."1 That's where feminism comes in, of course. "Feminism has been a movement devoted to helping women become selves and subjects rather than objects and men's others."
There are still difficulties, principally in the differences in experience between women in various situations, but the progress the movement has made is undeniable. The small things, the way men unconsciously (or consciously) see and treat women, however, are still there. I think that's because men still define themselves as not women. Men are not supposed to be girly, they can't cry in public, stay-at-home dads get less respect, etc. But all of those characteristics are social constructions anyway, so hopefully we can get rid of this divide.
The same applies in development work - if you're going out somewhere to help people in a "less developed" country, don't assume they're backwards. Don't assume their culture is unchanging. Don't assume they are completely different from you. Because they aren't.
1 Abu-Lughod, L, Fox, RG (ed). (1991). "Writing Against Culture" from Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. School of American Research Press.
We tend to define ourselves as individuals and as a society by what we are not. We are civilized. What does that mean? It means we are not savages. We are modern, because we are moving beyond tradition.
It was a large part of colonialism. Imperialists (mainly Europeans) defined themselves as modern in comparison to the "native" people of the places they occupied. There had to be a standard for comparison. The native culture was to be kept in its traditional, "pure" form, as though in a museum.
The same thing occurs today with development, with anthropological and sociological studies of other countries. Unless you are originally from that country (and even then sometimes, because you are entering in a professional capacity), you see the place from an outsider perspective. You look at the differences between yourself and them, you other-ize the people whom you are studying or helping, because that's how you remember who you are. Wherever there are differences, unfortunately, there's a hierarchy.
One of the places this is most evident is in the status of women in the West. According to Lila Abu-Lughod, "it has been accepted that, at least in the modern West, women have been the other to men's self."1 That's where feminism comes in, of course. "Feminism has been a movement devoted to helping women become selves and subjects rather than objects and men's others."
There are still difficulties, principally in the differences in experience between women in various situations, but the progress the movement has made is undeniable. The small things, the way men unconsciously (or consciously) see and treat women, however, are still there. I think that's because men still define themselves as not women. Men are not supposed to be girly, they can't cry in public, stay-at-home dads get less respect, etc. But all of those characteristics are social constructions anyway, so hopefully we can get rid of this divide.
The same applies in development work - if you're going out somewhere to help people in a "less developed" country, don't assume they're backwards. Don't assume their culture is unchanging. Don't assume they are completely different from you. Because they aren't.
1 Abu-Lughod, L, Fox, RG (ed). (1991). "Writing Against Culture" from Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. School of American Research Press.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Perched on a Hyphen
I said I would do a post a day in 75 words, but I didn't say I would give up my longer posts (and I didn't say I wouldn't, thought that was mainly because it didn't fit under the 75 words). And this one is most definitely long, but it's okay, because I've finally discovered how to put things after the jump!
I've mentioned this before, but I'm Indian-American. I don't mean American Indian, or rather, Native American (honestly, just because Columbus got his geography wrong doesn't mean we all have to). I mean I'm a desi. I'm from the Indian subcontinent. Except I was born here in America.
As I used to say when I was younger, I'm 100% Indian (genetically, from both my parents) and I'm 100% American (born and mostly raised here). Unfortunately, I've always been extremely skinny and I have no twin or clone, so anyone who looks at me knows that I am obviously not 200% of a person.
I've mentioned this before, but I'm Indian-American. I don't mean American Indian, or rather, Native American (honestly, just because Columbus got his geography wrong doesn't mean we all have to). I mean I'm a desi. I'm from the Indian subcontinent. Except I was born here in America.
As I used to say when I was younger, I'm 100% Indian (genetically, from both my parents) and I'm 100% American (born and mostly raised here). Unfortunately, I've always been extremely skinny and I have no twin or clone, so anyone who looks at me knows that I am obviously not 200% of a person.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)