{"id":59152,"date":"2019-10-27T16:59:53","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T16:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59152"},"modified":"2019-10-27T17:01:02","modified_gmt":"2019-10-27T17:01:02","slug":"the-national-geographic-twins-and-the-falsehood-of-our-post-racial-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59152","title":{"rendered":"The National Geographic Twins and the Falsehood of Our Post-Racial Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Geographic Twins and the Falsehood of Our Post-Racial FutureThe National Geographic Twins and the Falsehood of Our Post-Racial Future<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New Yorker<\/a>
\n2018-03-14<\/p>\n

Doreen St. F\u00e9lix<\/strong><\/a>, Staff Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nNational Geographic<\/a> has made a rare, and refreshing, admission of past racism. But its most recent cover story<\/a> undermines this corrective.<\/em> Photograph Courtesy National Geographic<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

On Monday, National Geographic<\/em><\/a> opened its April issue<\/a> with a sombre letter from the editor<\/a>, Susan Goldberg, presented with the even more sombre headline<\/a> \u201cFor Decades, Our Coverage was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.\u201d \u201cThe Race Issue<\/a>,\u201d which marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/a>, inaugurates the magazine\u2019s yearlong \u201cDiversity in America\u201d series. In the letter, Goldberg\u2014who is the first woman and the first Jewish person in the top post since the magazine\u2019s founding, in 1888\u2014informs her readers that John Edwin Mason<\/a>, a historian of photography and of the African continent, having studied the magazine\u2019s archive, found that, through failures of omission, overwrought inclusions, a melodramatic tone, and other editorial choices, National Geographic<\/em> had mismanaged its reportage on nonwhite cultures. As Goldberg summarized, \u201cuntil the 1970s National Geographic<\/em> all but ignored people of color who lived in the United States<\/a> .\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. Meanwhile it pictured \u2018natives\u2019 elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages\u2014every type of clich\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n

The magazine\u2019s admission is rare, and vindicates readers who, like me, have always had a visceral reaction to National Geographic\u2019s<\/em> covers and ethos. A recent project at the Times<\/em> was similarly refreshing\u2014offering obituaries for the indefatigable journalist Ida B. Wells<\/a>, the writer Sylvia Plath<\/a>, and thirteen other women who hadn\u2019t been memorialized in the paper at the time of their deaths. The Times, which calls its project \u201cOverlooked,\u201d uses oddly passive language in presenting its past missteps: its archives offer \u201ca stark lesson in how society valued various achievements and achievers,\u201d the copy reads. Mason uses more pointed language: \u201cNational Geographic<\/em> comes into existence at the height of colonialism .\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. and National Geographic<\/em> was reflecting that view of the world.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

National Geographic has made a rare, and refreshing, admission of past racism. But its most recent cover story undermines this corrective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8],"tags":[27418,28177,28129,28128,15901,28248,3886],"class_list":["post-59152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-doreen-st-felix","tag-john-edwin-mason","tag-marcia-biggs","tag-millie-biggs","tag-national-geographic","tag-susan-goldberg","tag-the-new-yorker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59152","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=59152"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59154,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59152\/revisions\/59154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}