{"id":42032,"date":"2015-07-28T02:32:02","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T02:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42032"},"modified":"2015-08-02T20:05:44","modified_gmt":"2015-08-02T20:05:44","slug":"42032","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42032","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s what I did when racists complained about an interracial family in my magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s what I did when racists complained about an interracial family in my magazine<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2015-07-27<\/p>\n

Scott Vogel<\/a><\/strong>, Editor-in-Chief
\nHoustonia, a city magazine based in Houston, Texas<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nOffended by this image? Houstonia<\/em> magazine doesn\u2019t want your business. (Photo by Chris Skiles\/Houstonia<\/em>)<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Don’t compare me to business owners who refuse to serve LGBT<\/a> customers<\/em><\/p>\n

As editor in chief of a lifestyle magazine, my job has been to balance two competing concerns of the journalism business: publishing stories that make a difference and selling ads that make money. This month, I discovered a third, hitherto unknown concern: ads that make a difference.<\/p>\n

The full-page ad on the first page of Houstonia<\/a><\/em> magazine\u2019s June issue<\/a> seemed innocuous. It showed a family of five in cozy domesticity, enjoying the warmly capacious living room they ostensibly found through the upscale real estate agency that created the ad. Mom stood barefoot in the living room, an arm around her 5-year-old daughter. Dad sat on an overstuffed sofa, struggling to keep the couple\u2019s squirmy 2-year-old from leaving his lap. And at their feet was an unbearably cute baby boy perched atop an embroidered pillow on the family\u2019s rug. Carefully composed and brightly lit, the scene, it seemed, could be described with just one word: adorable<\/em>. But as it turned out, there was another word for it: disgusting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how a suburban Houston<\/a> doctor described the image in an email to Ashton Martini Group<\/a>, the real estate company responsible for the ad. \u201cI will not put this magazine in my reception area!\u201d he wrote. The source of his disgust? The mother in the ad was white; the father, black; and the couple\u2019s three children, biracial. A second complaint reached me a week later, from a subscriber who confessed that, although he liked our magazine, \u201cI just can\u2019t go for racial mixing.\u201d And so, lest his children \u201cget it into their heads that this is okay,\u201d he had taken our June issue straight from the mailbox to the trashcan.<\/p>\n

I followed the two men\u2019s impulsive actions with one of my own…<\/p>\n

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

Here\u2019s what I did when racists complained about an interracial family in my magazine The Washington Post 2015-07-27 Scott Vogel, Editor-in-Chief Houstonia, a city magazine based in Houston, Texas Offended by this image? Houstonia magazine doesn\u2019t want your business. (Photo by Chris Skiles\/Houstonia) Don’t compare me to business owners who refuse to serve LGBT customers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,8,1249,20],"tags":[20547,20467,20545,20546,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-42032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-texas","category-usa","tag-ashton-martini-group","tag-houston","tag-houstonia","tag-scott-vogel","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42032","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=42032"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42100,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42032\/revisions\/42100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}