Everyone’s going bananas over the Vogue cover with LeBron and Gisele and the King Kong image it conjures up. Those who take issue with it say that the cover perpetuates negative stereotypes of black men as aggressive and animalistic. Then there’s the complaint over the stereotype of successful black men’s preference for white women.
I get it and see all of this in the cover. As my boy said, it make me feel like, “Where’s the rope swinging from the tree?” I see how and why it matters, but in the end, for me it’s not worth our energy t0 fight over it (I’m praying we won’t see Shaprton, Jackson, and NAACP showings on this).
Why it Matters
It is true that stereotypes play a role in how we think and behave. Sometimes they have crucial implications (i.e.racial profiling) and sometimes not. In the field of social psychology, there are scores of studies demonstrating this. Consider this excerpt from a root.com article:
People justifying the cover choice have scoffed at complaints that the pose conjures up the crudest King Kong symbolism. But Phillip Atiba Goff, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State University, recently conducted a study on the use of animalistic imagery in relation to black men. Titled, “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences,” the study, published recently by the American Psychological Association, asserts that “subtle metaphors” connecting black men and apes can go unnoticed but still have “great effect.”
“They penetrate our unconscious,” said Goff, “and they end up sort of powerfully influencing our behaviors.” [Source: Root.com]
Plenty of other studies on stereotypes have shown that they can have effects on outcomes that really matter such as academic performance and professional aspirations.
Why there’s Bigger Fish to Fry
Yes, stereotypes matter. But if we care so much, shouldn’t we consider how these kinds of stereotypes are generated and perpetuated? For sure, many are produced by whites as in the case of this cover. But how many stereotypes does the black community itself generate? Shouldn’t we be just just as worked up (if not more) about these things and be speaking out about them?
I don’t always appreciate the shock-journalist approach of Jason Whitclock, but he makes some good points on this one. Check this out:
Would we be having this discussion if LeBron struck the same pose on the cover of Ebony while holding Selita Ebanks? Think about it. And if we wouldn’t be having the discussion, what does that say about us? Are we only bothered by negative images of black men when the primary/sole consumer of the image is white people?
Vogue ain’t for us. Tyler Perry’s new movie, Meet the Browns, was produced with us in mind. It had a great box-office debut, coming in at No. 2 with a take of more than $20 million. It also broke records for negative black stereotypes and simple-mindedness.
We ate it up, and I’ve yet to hear much of an outcry about a romantic comedy built around a single mama with three baby daddies, her loud-mouthed, weed-smoking, gun-toting Latino best girlfriend, a deadbeat daddy, a drunk sister and a deceased father who was a pimp-turned-preacher. I could go on. This list is endless. [Source: Fox Sports]
Doesn’t a large part of what’s going wrong in the black community have to do with our intra-racial stereotyping, or how we view and portray ourselves? Doesn’t it have to do with how the black middle class views the black poor as lazy and shiftless? Doesn’t it have to do with the image of black women as sexual objects perpetuated by videos with back male protagonists? Isn’t it the good-for-nothing black man image many black women have in their head?
We shouldn’t dismiss the significance of the cover, but if we are to do something, let’s do something about this stuff in our own backyard.
5 responses so far ↓
1
JJ
// Mar 28, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Mike,
Thank you for this post. You hit the nail on the head! I have had my fill over this mickey-mouse stuff. All the noise over this is absurd. It just goes to show how paralyzed we have become about ourselves…. Everything is magnified to the “nth” degree. It’s ridiculous.
I haven’t seen Tyler Perry’s movie, and have no intention of seeing it. If Whitlock’s description of the movie is true, we DO have ‘double standards’. It’s the same ‘double standards’ we accuse Whites of. We disapprove of Whites who negatively stereo-type us but it’s alright if we do it ‘twice’ as hard?
This hyper-sensitivity is making us sicker. As you have said we have more important issues facing our community. We really need to start looking in the mirror at ourselves and leave LeBron alone.
2
Mike
// Mar 29, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Glad you liked the post, JJ. It is true that we do not spend enough time looking in the mirror. I believe that if we put half the energy into dealing with issues within the black community as we do fighting inter-racial racism, we’d be be in a better place now.
3
Vee
// Mar 31, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Mike, there’s nothing to see here. Move on.
This is s a non-issue but the NAACP+Al Sharpton supporting the young men involved in the Dunbar Village rape case . . . that’s a mega issue.
4
L
// Mar 31, 2008 at 4:48 pm
First, I’m only responding here because I really can’t stand Whitlock. I’ve never read anything he wrote that (a) didn’t make me scrunch up my face real hard in frustration and bewilderment, (b) scoff out loud at the pointlessness of his more than obvious observation, or (c) make me dumber. I’m not sure which of these, if not all three, his latest comments on the Vogue cover motivated. However, before we move on (shout out to Vee and Brand Nubian), let’s look at what he is saying real quick. And Mike, please stop including dude’s comments on your blog. They enrage me, and doesn’t he get some kind of cyber-credit or something when people link to his posts? He should get no credit; cyber or otherwise.
Anyway, Whitlock asks if blacks would be mad if the picture of Lebron was on Ebony and he was holding Selita Ebanks (?). What if the picture was on the cover of the Farmer’s Almanac and Jacques Cousteau was holding Miss Piggy? Or, what if it was a picture on the cover of Fetish Magazine of a fat man on a tricycle eating a Klondyke bar? The point is, to make a valid comparison you have to have all the elements of the picture the same to test how blacks would respond: “white” mag, black man, white woman. A better question is what if Lebron was holding Gisele on the cover of Essence? Same outrage, yo! You can’t look at any of this in isolation: the whole black man as animal analysis falls flat without the white woman. Same old story, cousin.
By the way, Whitlock is right that Perry doesn’t get a pass for being ignorant just because he’s black. For the record though, you can’t compare apples and oranges like that; you either, Mike. Perry’s play is discounted for being ignorant to the same degree you discount a black man saying “nigger” to another black man versus a white man saying it. Both wrong, but even in the same ballpark of wrongness. Or do you agree with Audre Lorde that there is no “hierarchy of oppression”?
5
Mike
// Apr 1, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Wow L. You shouldn’t let one guy get to you like that… Okay, the analogy Whitlock made is not perfect–maybe not even a good one at all. And I’m far from a fan of his. But the larger point he makes is that we should not be beefin’ about this cover when we do it to ourselves in much greater measure. A flawed analogy doesn’t invalidate that point. And yes, the point is not particularly deep in nature but it’s also something we have been whitewashing and avoiding for too long.
BTW, oppression is oppression and it’s wrong in all forms. But, we do have to admit that there are forms of it that have much great impact and cause greater harm than others.
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