{"id":36259,"date":"2014-04-15T15:29:05","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T15:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36259"},"modified":"2017-04-14T02:14:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T02:14:05","slug":"mixed-or-not-why-are-we-still-taking-pictures-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36259","title":{"rendered":"Mixed or Not, Why Are We Still Taking Pictures of \u201cRace\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mixed or Not, Why Are We Still Taking Pictures of \u201cRace\u201d?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Racism Review: scholarship and activism towards racial justice<\/a>
\n2014-04-13<\/p>\n

Sharon Chang<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Just days ago PolicyMic<\/em> put up a piece entitled \u201cNational Geographic<\/em> Concludes What Americans Will Look Like in 2050, and It\u2019s Beautiful<\/a>.\u201d In it writer Zak Cheney-Rice<\/a> attempts to address the so-called rise of multiracial peoples which has captured\/enchanted the public eye and with which the media has become deeply enamored. He spotlights a retrospective and admiring look at National Geographic\u2019s<\/em> \u201cThe Changing Face of America<\/a>\u201d project of last year featuring a series of multiracial portraits by well-known German photographer Martin Schoeller, and also peripherally cites some statistics\/graphs that demonstrate the explosion of the mixed-race population.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a matter of years,\u201d Cheney-Rice writes, \u201cWe\u2019ll have Tindered, OKCupid-ed and otherwise sexed ourselves into one giant amalgamated mega-race.\u201d Despite admitting racial inequity persists, he still flirts with the idea of an \u201cend\u201d approaching (presumably to race and by association racism), and suggests while we\u2019re waiting for things to get better, we might \u201c\u2026applaud these growing rates of intermixing for what they are: An encouraging symbol of a rapidly changing America. 2050 remains decades away, but if these images are any preview, it\u2019s definitely a year worth waiting for.\u201d We are then perhaps left with this rather unfortunate centerpiece of his statement<\/strong>, \u201cHere\u2019s how the \u2018average American\u2019 will look by the year 2050\u201d:…<\/p>\n

…What I think is incredibly important here (and doesn\u2019t seem to have come up in the ensuing disputes) is why portraits designed to quantify\/quality racialized appearance were taken with such intent in the first place? Photography which captures a person\u2019s image for the sole and express purpose of measuring then discussing their supposed race is not new and frankly, like pretty much everything race-related, has a long and insidious history. It\u2019s known as racial-type photography and it was popularized in the late 19th century by white pseudo-scientists to \u201cprove\u201d the superiority of some races, and the inferiority of others. Anthropologists used photography to make anatomical comparisons, then racially classify and rank human subjects on an evolutionary scale \u201cseeming to confirm that some peoples were less evolved than others and would therefore benefit from imperial control\u201d (Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics<\/em>, 1879-1940 by Anne Maxwell, p.21)…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just days ago PolicyMic put up a piece entitled \u201cNational Geographic Concludes What Americans Will Look Like in 2050, and It\u2019s Beautiful.\u201d In it writer Zak Cheney-Rice attempts to address the so-called rise of multiracial peoples which has captured\/enchanted the public eye and with which the media has become deeply enamored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8,394,20],"tags":[15901,17218,13297,2669,17217,14613,17216],"class_list":["post-36259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-national-geographic","tag-national-geographic-concludes","tag-policymic","tag-racism-review","tag-racism-review-scholarship-and-activism-towards-racial-justice","tag-sharon-chang","tag-zak-cheney-rice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53516,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36259\/revisions\/53516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}