Meandering Vaguely Around Timnah

yoisthisracist:

Kerrie asked: is this racist/sexist?

Yo, advertising people, seriously, fuck you for reinforcing fucking racist ass notions of what people’s possibilities and opportunities are. Like, genuinely, what is the point, except, OH RIGHT, you’re fucking racist assholes, all of you.

If you’re weirded out by this talk of “privilege” and such when people talk about racism, sexism, homophobia etc., consider the image above.

Now, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say I reckon in all likelyhood that the people responsible for casting and photographing and pulling together the concepts for these toys didn’t say “hey man I’m gonna go reinforce a bunch of negative gender and race roles by making some little kids act out some sort of infant 1950s Americana tableau in my toy catalogue.” NEVERTHELESS, check it out, this actually happened anyway. How about that shit?

The process by which these little unacknowledged stereotypes come to the fore, get made into stuff, and people look at the stuff on its way to print and either completely fail to notice that the black boy’s doing the white boy’s lawn and probably banging the white girl who is on valium because the white boy is screwing his way through a succession of secretaries, or who do notice it and go “ho ho, isn’t it amusing the way we are pastiching race relations in an inadvertent yet clever and post-ironical sort of way” is what privilege is.

It’s rarely deliberate, or overtly malicious, or done with any kind of aforethought at all. Often times it is not even noticed by the person doing it. THIS DOES NOT MAKE IT NOT BIGOTED. The folks above could be overtly racist and privileged, or they could be ignorantly racist and privileged. If you were the latter, wouldn’t you like to get told you were fucking up and looking like a racist/sexist douchecanoe? Y’know, so you didn’t get lumped in with that first group of deliberate racists and sexists? Something to think about.