My father was very active in the Civil Rights Movement.

[conuly]

There's a funny story my mother tells where my dad never got a ticket as a cabdriver in New Orleans because all the politicians and whatever had been elected on a civil rights platform, and when they saw his arrest record they let everything drop. My mother eventually figured this out for him.

So, you know, if I look at a book (as I often do when reviewing them online) and say "Great book, but out of a cast of 1000 odd characters there's only white folks", it's not because of my nieces that I pay attention (although I certainly keep them in mind when choosing books for them, because the last thing I want is for most of their books to only feature kids who look nothing like them), but because I was taught at a young age to pay some sort of attention to these things. I doubt I'm such a better person for it, although I try, but I can at least say I make the effort to notice, if nothing else, if there's a general lack of representation going on.

For Christmas, the nieces got new scooters. Evangeline's was from Radio Flyer and I, bored, picked up the catalog to flip through it today.

Wouldn't you know it - 61 children, and out of them all but three are white. And, as my mother said when she finished counting after I pointed this out to her, the three black kids (there are no Hispanics or Asians or god forbid Arabs in Toyland, remember!) aren't very dark-skinned either.

If ~20% of the US population is black, you would expect to see... um... 12 black kids. 3 is not 12. 3 is much less than 12. In the past, I've heard people commenting sardonically on how "activists" insist on "full proportional representation" in books and whatnot. Well, this is why. If you don't keep kicking and screaming and carrying on about having the pictures match reality, what happens is you don't even get those three kids in the little pamphlet. It'd be all white kids all over.

And it seems like a stupid thing to complain over, but it's such a little thing! How hard is it to get this stuff right?

Comments

[redbird]

Also, people who keep saying "it's such a little thing" never have a good answer for "if it's such a little thing, why do you refuse to do it?" (or "if it's so little, why is it so hard to get it right?").

[conuly]

I know, right?

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

It's really not a stupid thing. Coming from a mixed white and Native family, I'm always on the lookout for these sorts of things and I'm inevitably disappointed. For a lot of Canadian public, the only time they're seeing Native faces on television or in print news is in conjunction with crime or poverty; that's no small thing.

The only city I've lived in where advertising remotely reflects the demographics is Vancouver - and what gets me more is when Canadian companies buy "multicultural" stock photos that are obviously American. Canada's largest non-white populations are First Nations and Metis, Chinese, East Asian, and Filipino, but you certainly wouldn't know it to look at most of the media here.

[tenou-k.livejournal.com]

"Canada's largest non-white populations are First Nations and Metis, Chinese, East Asian, and Filipino, but you certainly wouldn't know it to look at most of the media here."

In the commercials for the Olympics I've been shuddering at for the last few months, we're treated to a bunch of ye olde white guys getting out of boats while the announcer tells us "We came to a land of ice and rock and made it our own."

Yeah, the one dark skinned guy in the ad doesn't really make up for completely erasing the First Nations from the cultural narrative of the Olympics and "Canadian" heritage.

Cringe cringe cringe.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Oh God, don't get me started on the Olympics. From using a logo that represents (with an insulting smiley face) an area nowhere near where the games are being held (because all First Nations are the same, and all their culture is fair game for white Canada to claim as their own when it's convenient), to the Cowichan sweaters debacle, to the ugly note that most of BC is unceded FN land, to the fact that a large number of the urban poor getting screwed over by this spending are Native...I can't say I'm really proud to have my province of residence playing host to this.

[conuly]

...

Now I want to get you started on the Olympics, actually.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

*snorts* You may not be able to tell, but I'm not exactly thrilled.

The whole thing feels like Canada trying to restore its worldwide reputation without actually addressing any of the issues that tarnished said reputation - and to play up the best parts of Vancouver while taking money out of the pocket of the worst parts. It's been a headache because the woman from whom I rent a room is a huge Olympics fan and will be attending the games, so I've been doing a lot of tongue-biting lately.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Correction: I meant to write either South Asian or East Indian and got muddled.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Wait, you review books online?

I'm always looking for people to do book reviews for me. What genres do you read? If I send you a book, will you review it?

Take a looksee and let me know if you're interested:

www.wednesdayleefriday.com

[conuly]

Right now, I only am reviewing the nieces' books, and only their picture books... I'm hesitant to start on our chapter books because that might take forevah.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

<3

[leora.livejournal.com]

There is a little Facebook game that I am really enjoying. But something that makes me sad about it is that you have only two options for an avatar. Those options are male or female. The female is a white girl with brown hair in a pony tale. Now, I am a white girl with brown hair, so it actually is a reasonable approximation of me, but a lot of people who are female are not white with brown hair, and that seems such an incredibly limited choice. The male character is a white boy with short brown hair.

This annoys me. And I think all of the other characters I have seen (that aren't animals) have been white. I wasn't paying attention at first, because at first I didn't realize that it was going to be so heavily white. It was after playing for a bit and realizing that you don't get options to change your appearance that I started to notice.

It's a fun, little game, but this aspect really does make me sad. I am glad that most of the games that have avatars have a basic build an avatar, and it does tend to have options for a range of skin colors, facial characteristics, and hair color. And when an option is missing, it is usually for technical reasons. (I couldn't make a Sim of one of my friends look very realistic because they didn't allow curly haired men, but 3-d curly hair is technically difficult to do). Although they didn't allow long hair on males for no good reason. Here, have a userpic of me and some of my friends as Sims. Although one of the females should be taller, and the body proportions are fairly off for some of us, as they give very limited body shape options. (In all fairness, that one of my friends has unusually large breasts is something I can understand why they didn't want to cater to as they probably didn't want the game being associated with making big-breasted women. But some women do have big breasts.) Anyhow, those little things, I don't mind. Although the lack of long-hair on males bugs me. But no racial diversity... that seems a pretty major limitation.

This got rambly.

[leora.livejournal.com]

After writing this, I decided why not say something? The game is in beta, so maybe they will change it. I asked if there was a suggestions area, as I couldn't easily find one. And explained what I wanted to suggest. Apparently they are planning more customizability, and I strongly suspect this will include options for more races. While it's not great that the beta release is all-white, I am more forgiving for something still under development. And you only see about 6 people total in the game. So, maybe this will become less of an issue. I am also pleased that I am not the only person to want a bit more racial diversity. The thing is, the current avatar even has brown eyes, like me. So, it's a fairly good match (other than being younger, cuter, and with a different body shape than I have). But not everyone is me. And I even believe that not everyone should be me.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I was playing a game on Facebook that had a similar problem too. Except the worst thing was that they DID offer different races, but if you wanted anything besides the default white characters, you had to use game cash or even real money to change your character's race. That seemed REALLY horrible to me!

[leora.livejournal.com]

Uh yeah... Although the idea that not being white is a prestigious bonus extra is vaguely amusing. But that would really bother me too. Most of the games that give you a choice of avatar seem to have a fairly decent avatar creator with a moderate range of hair color and skin tones. You can't necessarily make one that looks like you (and sometimes I wonder, really is long straight hair without bangs that odd a hair style on a female that it's not there in dark brown?) but most have the basics and don't seem too biased. It is something I think games should think about.

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

You saying that the US is 20% black made me look up the stats for the UK, and I'm amazed. Here's what wikipedia says:
92% white
3.5% Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi
1% Chinese and other Asian
2% black
1.2% mixed race
I'd always assumed I lived in non-representative areas and that they were significantly more white than the general population, but actually they're a lot closer to the norm than I expected (93.6% and 94.5%). I'm just astonished at how racially homogenised we are, and that 3/61 being non-white is almost exactly proportional representation of our demographic stats (it would be 4.5/61 if completely accurate).

However, in the US that certainly isn't the case, and there's really no excuse for having so few non-whites depicted.

[conuly]

That's not so surprising. The UK isn't a nation of immigrants, nor did they forcibly move millions of people into the country as slaves. Into this country, sure, but not into your country.

[blue-eye.livejournal.com]

I saw you on NY group and added you...I read your profile and we have some stuff in common.

[pne.livejournal.com]

There's a funny story my mother tells where my dad never got a ticket as a cabdriver in New Orleans because all the politicians and whatever had been elected on a civil rights platform, and when they saw his arrest record they let everything drop. My mother eventually figured this out for him.

I don't understand this paragraph. Can you explain, please?

I suspect that my lack of comprehension hinges on the phrases "elected on a civil rights platform" and "his arrest record"; the first I don't know what it means and the second I not only don't know who arrested whom (did your father arrest people, or did he get arrested), nor what that should have to do with civil rights platforms, elected officials, or traffic tickets.

Also, to clarify, "cabdriver" means someone who drives a taxicab (a car that will take random people somewhere for a fee), right?

[conuly]

Working backwards...

1. Yes, that's what cabdriver means.

2. Your arrest record is a record of how many times you've been arrested. My father was arrested many, many times for participating in civil rights marches and demonstrations and the like so

3. the local politicians who were primarily black and who had been elected by doing things to help in the cause of civil rights and all were happy to help out somebody who had helped the cause. And so were the cops and all, who even if they themselves weren't black and inclined to care about people who helped black people certainly were bright enough to know on which side their bread was buttered. So when they saw my father had been arrested many, many times before for participating in protests about equal rights for black people

4. they went "Wow, I bet we can let this parking violation slide, what a great guy he is!" even though

5. they really should not have done that because legally that's like letting parking violations and speeding infractions slide because the guy is your brother or something... but as corruption goes, it's the sort of genial nepotism it's hard to get very mad about.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

If it really was such a little thing, it would be very easy to fix, but it's actually not a little thing at all. The distressing truth is that advertising surveys show, and have always shown, that both black and white shoppers have a strong preference for shopping in stores they identify as 'white'. The purpose of advertising is to draw in customers, and using white models draws in more.

This is not something that can be fixed just by putting on a band-aid, hassling store owners to add a couple more token black models to their catalogues. The real problem is the underlying notion that people are to be valued according to appearance and material possession rather than character and accomplishment. And one of the most pernicious marketing-ploys is selling black people the belief that they'll never quite measure up, but they can almost measure up if they buy enough stuff.

There's a lot to be said for 'voting with your pocketbook' - only buying from merchants you feel are deserving of your support - and writing a polite little note to the head of the company to say why you are, or are not, pleased to purchase from them. But even more, there's refusing to let yourself or your girlies be defined by advertising of any sort. Yeah, all these companies are trying to persuade everyone to believe that buying more makes a person better, but you know it's not true, and you can teach your girls not to fall for that bullshit either.

I suggest a few sessions of drawing beards, moustaches, horns, silly hats and snarky captions on catalogue models. :)

[conuly]

Well, I wouldn't give them a catalog except to cut pictures out of anyway, so that's a moot point, but it comes up in picture books a lot too.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think the little things are the hardest to fix, and that's what makes them important.

Also, I suspect you are indeed a better person for being more aware of stuff like this!