The Aesthetics of One L.A. Parent Magazine Cover
I can easily imagine a feline, trim, fit, highly-educated, talented, ebony woman with extremely expensive glasses sitting in a gleaming, sunlit room for some “team” meeting about the cover of the November 2006 edition of L.A. Parent magazine. She’s the only person of color in the room on that day. She would know that what is happening here is wrong—very wrong—but she also might know about these random points:
- She knows that the co-workers in this meeting she regards as “good friends” are not racists—based on popular concepts about how a racist is supposed to behave. Often these concepts are defined by racists more out of irony than conspiracy. Often we get these concepts from Hollywood-funded dramatizations instead of formal historical information or social-scientific study.
- She can appreciate that a male child with strong African features is in the picture at all. She understands that he is used as symbol of “diversity” for all children “of color” in some idealized Los Angeles. She would understand that the leaders of the clique that she associates with her economic survival regard this “inclusiveness” as an act of “generosity.”
- She is very likely to regard, say, my writing “negatively” about this L.A. Parent magazine cover as useless. We have to get down to the raw, materialistic fascist facts: the people in power will show this image to thousands while I am sitting here writing a few lines to myself. I would daresay that she would view my behavior as pathological crab-in-a-barrel-ism while the psychological condition of herself and her coworkers is “normal” and eternally sustainable. For her to even recognize my existence regarding this matter would be her “falling” for my “tricks” to “drag” her out of her “lofty” career position “down” to my level.
- It would not surprise me that she would consider herself as one who ‘spoke up for Black people’ by insisting that at least let a little white girl be directly on top of him instead of a white boy.Let’s not talk about racism. Let’s talk about feelings and aesthetics. The photographer who took this photo probably took several photos with the colored kid in several positions. The problem, I imagine, is how the decision-makers feel about the colored-kid being on top of anyone. Placing an innocent little boy’s naughty bits on top of a male or female is not a problem and is usually filed under ‘innocence’—but it is possible that one can draw from America’s rich racist past to supply the feeling that the little black boy is less innocent than the other boys. Additionally, there is the “problem” of gender-specific ordering as well. Notice that the female children alternate between the males.
So, while my lovely feline sister might disagree, the problem with this imagery is that it is often passed off as “universal”—this implies to a young impressionable person (like my youngest son) that this ordering is the way it’s supposed to be. While we can all be happy that yet another educated Black person has a job, we all need to remember that children absorb these images deeply and they stay there for the rest of their lives. Healthy children are highly aggressive data collectors and pattern matchers. They have no idea whether the information they are consuming is authentic educational material or just business for a few desperately poor adults, sitting in sunlit gleaming rooms.
My position on this matter is highly conservative and far, far away from what is happening in the world today: all published information should be educational. This implies the complete destruction of systems of propaganda. To understand the implications of my crazy-ass statements, check out “Noam Chomsky: Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind” here in the kinté space. And for more rasx() talk about the media, see “rasx() on Media: Billboards and Postcards.”
So when I say that all published information should be educational, I am not talking about Elmo reading you the evening news every night. The aesthetics of what ‘we’ think of as educational material must change as well… There is much room for improvement.