I know everyone’s focus this morning is on Rex Tillerson’s ouster, but this story is one that caught my eye and is deeply personal. First, the facts and then the personal.
Facts:
Both WaPo and The Root have stories on this. From WaPo:
Months ago, when National Geographic set out to make race the sole focus of its April 2018 issue, it decided to engage in some soul-searching.
For much of its 130-year history, the magazine depicted people of color in crude stereotypes. Its archives are loaded with pictures of brown-skinned “natives” gazing in apparent awe at Western technology, articles referring to tribal peoples as “savages,” and of course many, many photos of bare-breasted Pacific island women striking vaguely seductive poses. Those glossy Geographics, stacked up in attics and basements, were favorites of more than a few curious young boys — with little interest in New Guinea or Polynesia.
….
The title of Goldberg’s piece put it more bluntly: “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.”
From the Root:
Susan Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, and perhaps not so coincidentally the magazine’s first woman and first Jewish person to hold the title, penned an article for the Race Issue explaining how the magazine had invited a leading historian, University of Virginia professor John Edwin Mason, to investigate the magazine’s coverage of people of color in the U.S. and abroad.
Goldberg wrote:
What Mason found in short was that until the 1970s National Geographic all but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic workers. Meanwhile it pictured “natives” elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché.
Unlike magazines such as Life, Mason said, National Geographic did little to push its readers beyond the stereotypes ingrained in white American culture.
Let me start with the article from The Root which unsurprisingly, leads with why I think this change happened and why representation, inclusiveness, diversity and who’s at the helm of an organization matters.
As stated, Susan Goldberg is the first woman and the first Jewish person to helm the magazine. Would the “Race Issue” have happened otherwise? Perhaps. But is it more likely that it happened because of who she is? I would posit that it hadn’t happened before her so draw your own conclusion.
One of my favorite movies (much to my husband’s dismay) is “Silence of the Lambs”. One of my favorite exchanges and lines comes from when Clarice is challenging Dr. Lecter to be introspective:
But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself?
This is something America has been unable and/or unwilling to do about race. We make efforts; we tiptoe up to the water’s edge but we don’t dive in head first. I think what Goldberg’s done here is turn that high-powered perception at the magazine and I think that’s a very good thing.
Personal:
And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.
—James Baldwin
From fourth grade on, I was one of few if any black kids in any school I attended. Even fewer if you only consider girls. Being a smart girl in school in the 70’s and 80’s was hard enough. Being black on top of that was harder. Being almost the only one?
Kids can be mean. I think despite the focus we’ve seen on addressing bullying and the uptick we’ve seen in the Trump era, overall they are more empathetic now than they were when I was growing up. I felt this during my son’s childhood, which is not to say there weren’t issues. Some things will always be with us, but do believe that we’ve learned a lot since the days when I was a kid and that generationally we as parents have done a better job in instilling compassion and empathy. Likewise our children’s generation is inherently more diverse.
Back to NatGeo. I hated this magazine as a kid. Hated it. While some people saw all the places they’d never been and might never go, I saw a weapon because that’s how it was used against me. “Is your family in here” with taunting laughs are thing I heard growing up.
What I saw but didn’t initially understand as such , were pictures of people being exploited and mocked for their culture, viewed through a superior, condescending , colonial white lens of “look at these savages” , words that were actually used in some NatGeo stories.
I saw people who looked like me being treated like science and anthropological experiments, there for the amusement of white people. And this was true because this was exactly how classmates treated me while wielding this magazine as a weapon.
It was bad enough in elementary and middle school. It got worse in high school, whether because of my own maturity and awareness or the effects of puberty on male classmates or some combination of both. By then, I was constantly reminded that many of the black and brown women featured in the magazine were topless and was taunted by male classmates to show my breasts. Historian John Edward Mason confirms this was not isolated to my experience:
As for the bare-breasted island women the magazine regularly featured in glossy, full-color photos: “I think the editors understood this was frankly a selling point to its male readers,” Mason told NPR.
What they saw as a selling point based on distorted sexuality but through the justification of “science”, I saw and experienced as humiliation, exploitation and threatening. Understand I am not being a prude about cultural norms. I am talking about the fact that it was done deliberately for entertainment and known that it would appeal to prurient interests.
As Ta-Nehisi-Coates has written:
“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.”
This has been true since black people were brought to America, and black women’s bodies have been used and abused physically to exert the most work out of us but also sexually to create a trope of the “wild” black woman.
We’ve been raped, beaten, and left without recourse during and after the time we were property. We’ve been hyper-sexualized just because and as a means to denigrate and blame us for some white men’s inability to admit actual attraction.
Think about that history in context of white boys waving National Geographic magazines at black girls as sport. Think about the pain that inflicts and the lasting legacy it creates. Think about the devaluation of actual people both by the exploiters and the exploited.
I’m a firm believer that we cannot heal unless we confront. We cannot grow unless we learn. We cannot look forward until we look back. This is a good start. It’s the beginning of a broader conversation we as a nation (and as a world) need to deal with. Together.
I’ll end where I began, with Susan Goldberg:
April 4 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.It’s a worthy moment to step back, to take stock of where we are on race. It’s also a conversation that is changing in real time: In two years, for the first time in U.S. history, less than half the children in the nation will be white. So let’s talk about what’s working when it comes to race, and what isn’t. Let’s examine why we continue to segregate along racial lines and how we can build inclusive communities. Let’s confront today’s shameful use of racism as a political strategy and prove we are better than this.
Are we better than this? Time will tell.