Nov 132009
We’re having a discussion at potluck. Lemme know in the comments! Thanks! (on and click to make bigger)
Possibly related posts:
dawn friedman’s blog
Follow Me
My Tweets
- @motherissues OK, I think I like Talk to the Moose even better!
- @motherissues Two of my faves all smushed up? I love your bro! (Nice piece!)
- @lilysea Point taken. She is terrier-sized. It is awfully funny to see her jumping like a bunny out there hunting squirrels!
- I think the snow is now taller than our dog.
- @racheltayse @tinymantras I've nearly ruined friendships by vacationing w/people.
Well, it took me a little while to find what you were asking about, but I am a little perturbed by the clown?monkey? whatever-it-is in the middle. It does look very similar to stereotypical racist imagery. Especially given the complete lack of association with anything this gathering seems to be about – winter? school? water? What is it even *doing* there??!
Let me guess-the monkey in the white gloves? No, I don’t think it racist. Even if the monkey were the only non-person, which he’s not, I get no sense there is any blatant or subconscious desire to have the monkey be symbolic of anyone or anything else.
Back in the day when Saturn would use actual owners in their print advertising a San Francisco native who liked to bowl was chosen. And, she was black. They photographed her in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in her team shirt holding her favorite ball. It was to be a print spot in magazines and billboards across the US. A few days (hours?) before it was to go live someone at the agency saw an actual, printed advertisement in the offices and noticed the woman’s green bowling ball. “Nice,” they are reported to have said, “but why is she holding a watermelon?” Saturn pulled the ad.
One would like to hope that the Unschooler’s poster is equally as unintended, merely the result of an unfortunate choice of colors for their three-color set up (which is cheaper to print than four or more colors in a single image).
I see small people, big people, a snowman, a clown, and a surfing penguin. I don’t think I can read any meaning of any kind in this. What am I missing? Is the surfing penguin offensive to native Hawaiians? What are those tiny head-shaped things in between the children? That could be sort of disgusting. Wait, is it the baseball caps? The pigtails? I give up.
I can’t tell what could be racist about it, either. What am I missing?
Is this like one of those “do you see candlesticks or two faces” things? I’m missing the secret racist inverted version of this picture, but I tried really hard. I even stared and let my vision relax and looked at my nose… you know all the tricks for those “look for the dolphin in the blurry dot” pictures? I’ve never seen those either. Does it mean I’m not racist, or that I have a below average IQ? Is this one of those ink blot quizes? I managed to fail those too. I kept giggling and I said I saw she-ra’s castle in one of them (I totally did!!) and they said I was completely immature. Clearly they don’t understand the higher level thinking required to appreciate all that is She-ra.
At the very least it is ugly and creepy. Yipes.
You’re talking about the creepy dangling clown guy who looks a bit like he was pulled out of some horribly offensive 1920’s cartoon of a black person, right? The hell is that? I’d like to chalk it up to a poor choice in color scheme but it’s genuinely creeping me out now that I’ve noticed it.
Of course, my intense hatred for clowns might be tainting my answer.
Well, that’s no “normal” looking clown, is it? Its features resemble the awful caricatures of monkey-faced renderings in old cartoons. Why they would put that on there is beyond me.
nah. just a poor choice in color scheme, since everything is either black or blue. blue skin would look extremely unnatural, so the clown happens to be black. blue is totally reasonable for the bird and the silver/green background combo for the snowman is the closest it’s going to get to white. unfortunate, but a coincidence. plus, monkeys (even clown monkeys! lol, wtf?) do have brown/black fur, so eh. just bad design, but i don’t think anything needs to be read into it. it seems like it was just supposed to be fun and whimsy. unintentional racist undertones isn’t quiiiite the same as the real thing. nothing like the australians who spoofed the jackson 5, oh dear lord.
I think the clown is, as others have noted, an unfortunate result of the 2-color scheme. But, yes, it’s very unfortunate.
I’d go with “badly drawn”.
Those people, and this event, have, ime, kind of a tradition of being confused, but I don’t think I’d go further, in this case.
Damn right it is, all the blue people are unusually small, and they are being dominated by the brown people – not to mention that the penguin, snowman and monkey appear to be depriving them of their civil right to come and go as they please…Bastards!
I keep looking at it and laughing under my breath, in a fairly horrified fashion. I get that is was an oversight and the kind of thing that happens in a 2-color process if no one is on the ball. But, wow, it’s like graphic arts road kill.
Well, sure it’s unintentional and all that, but if you were a black person and you saw a white person wearing it, would you think, “Huh, that is some poor, unintentionally racist art work.” Or would you think, “Why is that person wearing a shirt that has an offensive black caricature on it?”
i can see where it might make someone uncomfortable, but i think it’s pretty clearly not intentionally racist. it’s more just a matter of really, really, really ugly/poor design.
When I first looked at the image, I couldn’t tell if that was a monkey or a person. And when you have a monkey-person hybrid who appears to be wearing whiteface make-up, yeah, I think it’s kind of racist. I don’t think that was the artist’s intention, but how can you look at that and not think it looks like an Amos and Andy character?
I saw the hanging down thing as a clown wearing blackface, which is racist.
Intention doesn’t matter when we’re talking about an image like this — there are lots of unintentionally racist things that affirmatively harm people of color. Intention or lack thereof might change how I tell the person their image is racist, but “I didn’t mean to” isn’t a defense!
Mm. Yeah. It’s bad, unfortunate, etc. One of things you might not notice right away if you are not a person of color — the insult’s not directed at you, so it isn’t on your radar. Plus clowns are fraught and risky.
“Clowns are fraught and risky.” That should be a t-shirt!
The clown jumped right out at me — it is the centered image. And yeah, it’s right out of Amos & Andy to me.
I think Leslie is right: clowns are fraught and risky, even when not done in this color scheme.
Sometimes a monkey is just a monkey however, that monkey is a bit creepy.
If you deconstructed it defensively, you could argue that the clown is merely the colour of the other people in silhouette. But the whole thing has a creepers feel and it would be hard to argue that he isn’t in blackface because of the mouth.
People – you are putting way too much thought into this…
I came here to look at all the comments (since I last looked and couldn’t bring myself to comment) before I read your recent post.
I think I agree with your mom’s latest comment, although her first one was a VERY pointed critique of several things in the picture I’d never even thought about.
I guess my first reaction was just about the clouwn looking lie a “pickaninny” [sp] — one of those racist blackface cartoons of the 20s (I believe). I mention something about them in my dissertation when talking about the first illustrations of the wonderful “Nina Bonita” (criticism courtesy of my former advisor).
Anyway, on to the other comments.
You know, as second most frequent comment ever on your site I just have to keep on commenting, right?
(As if I wouldn’t of my own will — I think I comment WAY more than I write on my own blog 
.
I meant second most frequenter commenter on your blog, not comment
.
[typepad -- this is not a duplicate comment, please let it be published
]
.
I meant second most frequenter commenter on your blog, not comment
HAHAHA, I’d clicked twice and not realized it, this is hilarious!
I thought your email was a comment here… (that your mom was teasing you). In any case, I’ll respond here. I continue to agree with her (the over-analysis) and, furthermore, when I read her first comment, I thought — ha! that sounds just like what I could do if I were to go all deconstructionist on this (something most people in the humanities do and which I can’t stand — have you heard of the book Post Modern Pooh — a fake analysis of Pooh making fun of literary over-analysis? I really wanted to read it, but just cannot justify the expense. Maybe used someday). Anyway, ok, now I’ll go read the other post cause I’m curious…
P.S. see, I’m increasing the comment count, though I’ll never catch up with Lisa.
I am the organizer of this years UWWG Gathering. It was just been brought to my attention, that our t-shirt logo design appears to some to be depicting a black clown and thus offending some as being a racist design.
I truly apologize to anyone who felt this! This was not the intent of our design in any way! We have since taken the t-shirt picture design off our website, and the design is being slightly redone to correct this.
The problem and misinterpretation of this years shirts by some, was simply due to the design colors as viewable on the website, are much darker than what the colors the silk screen and actual shirts will really be. What was to be a light silvery grey, appears much more greyish black on the website. And thus our clown appears to some to be depicting a black clown.
And apparently some even mistook the clown as being a black monkey clown. What are really the clowns big feet, apparently to some looks like a monkey’s tail. Please note – the clown, as are all the rest of the artwork on our shirts, are all standard “clip art’ that the print shop downloaded from available clip art programs.
The print shop actually design the logos in black and white only. And then we discuss and decide what colors to make the design. The colors we choose for the design are not added to the logo design until much later, when they make the actual silk screen.
At our requests, the Print Shop “colorized” the original black and white design for our website purpose only, just to give everyone a rough visual of the colors. The colors that appeared on our website, were slightly different shades and hues of the colors as they will appear on the actual shirts. I should have made that clear with the picture on our website. I apologize for this lack of communication on my part, and any hurt feelings and heartache it may have caused to others.
To avoid any further ill feelings or misinterpretations, the design is being slightly redone. Once the design has been corrected, we will re-post it on our website.
Again, I apologize to anyone who may have felt offended. That was truly not the intention of mine or anyone associated with our UWWG Gatherings.
P.S.
To answer those who wondered why a clown was even a part of our design – it’s representative of our big opening night event, i.e., our Winter Waterpark Carnival where we have everything from face painting and balloon sculpting to carnival games and even a dunking tank.
~ Carol Reinhard – UWWG Organizer
Carol, thank you so much for coming here and sharing this with us. It’s great to know that the UWWG makes being a welcoming event a priority and I appreciate your response!!!
Hm. Doesn’t look like a clown in blackface to me at all. A “blackface” mouth is totally different, thicker bright white lips, etc. It doesn’t really look like a monkey, either. What stood out to ME was that the penguin looks like it’s cursing up a storm. :p