"Let's Talk About Race"

Anonymous
"Let's Talk About Race"

A recent article called, "Let's Talk About Race," was featured in O magazine in which readers were asked to take a look at race through for many, a flipped perspective. Take the image above, for example. Many a minority girl has walked into a store and the toy isles are lined with white dolls. It is easy to say, well, who cares about representation, it's just a doll, until you see it from the other way around. How many white parents buy their daughters black dolls or buy the black dolls because it's the only doll they can find on a shelf? Things are improving and it's not so black and white anymore, with many other doll lines including different race dolls in their lines, but for many walking down the isle, this is still what they see.

The infamous 1940s "Doll Test," which has since been repeated in modern times with similar results, long ago asked young black children ages 3-7 to identify which doll they thought of in a more positive light, a black doll or a white doll. Nearly all of the black child subjects selected the white doll over their own helping illustrate the early effects of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation and of consistently being told that their skin color was not beautiful or worthy, as was further reinforced by their lack of interaction with dolls, toys, or positive images of those like themselves.

"Let's Talk About Race"

How about the image of Asian women at a nail salon being served by all white techs instead of the reverse. Though we may not verbalize to others that this may "look funny," the truth is, many of us have grown to expect that the nail tech is probably going to be Asian or some other minority serving as opposed to being served. An image like this challenges our expectations and our prejudices of the "way things should be." We may not say that, and it's not necessarily racism, but it is designed make some perhaps question, why did they feel like the image may have been a little off to them.

"Let's Talk About Race"

The same goes for the last image in the series of a rich Latina woman being served by a white maid. The Latina woman doesn't even acknowledge the maid's presence whilst being served. It may garner the same feelings as above in that, we may not be able to verbalize or want to verbalize that the image seems strange, but for many it's a confrontational visual representation of who we think should and should not hold the privilege, power, and wealth in this image.

Chris Buck, a white photographer who took the images, said, "When you see an image of someone from a different background, what is your expectation of them? When you see an image from someone [of a different race], what is your expectation of them and are we challenging it? Why do we expect a certain thing from someone of a [certain race] and expect them to be serving another [race]?"

"Let's Talk About Race"
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