White and the Others

Around me, I have a lot of people confused with their own racial identity. Majority of them don’t know how to categorize themselves because they are of a mixed raced. Two friends are of half Pilipino and half European decent but one looks completely ‘White’ when the other looks ‘Asian’. Herman Gray’s quote in Thursday’s lecture “whiteness is the privileged yet unnamed place from which to see and make sense of the world” really reached out to me. If being white or in this case ‘looking’ white is a privileged, then what about the rest of us, the “Others”? For the friend who looks ‘White’, she gets treated in a different way. When going out with her friends and family, she is the one always being asked questions, asked to order and so on presumably just because she looks ‘White’. When both of my friends went back to the Philippines one was stared at all the time, and given ‘special’ treatment while the other was just another local. As for the mixed raced individual it made me question what kind of ‘eye’ they viewed life through. For the friend looking ‘white’ she most probably views life through ‘white eyes’ as Stuart Hall terms, but for the other through a broken minority lens. Is being half white good enough to be classified as ‘White’ and view life through a ‘White eye’?

Richard Dyer stated that White people were the ones that created dominant images of the world. This brings in theories of Euro centralism. White people are the center of the world. But further more, by being central to the world they create a desire for non-white people to act and look like them (projection). This is very true in Asia. Walking past a magazine stall, 10/10 times, magazines with ‘White’ models sell for a higher price and tend to be of more popularity. The magazines with ‘Other’ models don’t have same values as the one’s with a ‘White’ model on the cover. European clothes sell for a much higher price and you instantly become an elite’ of the society by associating yourself with ‘White’ culture. ‘White’ is more desirable than any ‘Other’ and sometimes the ‘Others’ go to extreme terms in order to associate oneself with any ‘White’ culture. However, does associating oneself with ‘White’ culture bring the ‘Others’ any closer to being ‘White’? For those with mixed racial identities do you have to look white in order to be classified as White? While being so influenced by Euro centralism, I never was fully aware of such concepts. The lectures and readings bring me closer to understanding many things that never seemed so apparent to me.

What is 'Exotic'?

Yesterday, I was shopping in one of the factory outlet stores near the city and found a top that looked quite cute. When I was looking for a price, I found a tag that said "Made by the most exotic people in the world - INDONESIANS." Yes. 'Indonesians' was in capitals.

We spoke about exoticism in the tutorials last week and, as this is a new concept to me, I admitted that I have never thought of the term 'exotic' as detrimental or offensive. Although it is not a term I tend to use often, I had never considered the use to be offensive or narrow /'white' - minded. The term 'exotic' as I understand it, is often used to describe something that is different or unusual and used to define a place or group of people from a different and remote country. However, this begs the question that I have just learned to ask; different from whom and remote from where?

Ferguson (1998:75) notes that the European and Eurocentric ideas about the 'other' as 'exotic' are pleasurable, because the 'other' can be identified as different and unusual. Here in this shop, I was suddenly struck with just how rude and racist this claim on a T-Shirt really was, on multiple levels. Firstly, there was an assumption that all people in a position to buy the shirt, like me, would find Indonesia 'exotic' - yet again Stuart Hall's (1981) theory of the 'White Eye' is applicable. More than that, however, this was an example of a company utilising the cheap trade and low wages of workers in Indonesia and using the term 'exotic' to make this 'palatable to the western spectator' (Shohat & Stam, 1995:186) so that an assumed western consumer would spend a fortune on a shirt that was inexpensive to produce.

I see no fault in identifying somewhere as being unique and completely different from my experiences. There are clear, realistic and acknowledgeable differences in the day in the life of an African child in Africa, A Samoan child in Samoa, An American child in America and a Chinese child in China and each of these children could, I believe, justifiably consider the others 'exotic'. However,as we know, it is not as simple as this. Fiji, for example, is a place that I have always wanted to visit and consider 'exotic' - in what I see as a positive sense of the world. 'Exotic' for me meaning that they have beautiful beaches, wildlife and cultural practices that I could not experience unless I went there. I see no problem (although I invite criticism) with this, except that I am spoiled in the fact that I have the ability to dream of going to an 'exotic' place where many don't. However, Fiji is 'exotic' for me because I have never been there and have no relatives from there and I know nothing about the culture. To suggest that everyone reading this article would find Fiji, China, Africa, Samoa or Indonesia 'exotic' would be a little Eurocentric and a little silly really in the same way the label on the shirt seems to reflect a very narrow-minded view.

I guess the conclusion I would come to therefore, is that the term 'exotic' when used on an individual level is a descriptive tool that, for me, holds no negative connotations. However, when applied in a larger more broad way, as in this shirt label, suddenly there are generalisations made and offensive suggestions represented, a kind of inferential racism (Hall, 1981:7). Perhaps it is word to be careful with.

Needless to say, I put the shirt back on the rack.

I can 't look at the world the same way, nor can I look at my self the same way. I surpose I have been intellctually lazy and my default position has been that society has been living in a "Post-Racial" world; not that I thought racism was dead, but , that it was dying. I am privileged to be a white male, living in New Zealand, and it's good: I don't have think about my "race", thats not to say that i don't notice our "multicultural" world, I just don't have to think about it, if i don't want, that is a privilage.

I mean, I knew, that there was institutional racism within the police perhaps, I grew up with those stories, and the newspapers well they push an angle from time to time, you know, and "The News" sometimes shows some out-dated opinions, and isn't it funny to spot the racist sterotypes at the movies, and , and , and...The penny has dropped, and I can't hear for the ringing.

It's the ubiquity of it all. What set me off was watching "Breakfast" this morning, the white presenters telling "us" about a Taiwanesse food festival, they were eating the food and talking about it, but, and I don't know if i'm going mad or not, but i had the distinct feeling that "I" was being spoken to as if I were a farmer's wife who had never seen an "Asian" let alone thier food, when I heard "and it's not to bad" as if this cuisine was wierd and different, it seemed to me entirely patronising and all I could think about was Hall's quote "The "white eye"...seeing and positioning everything in it". Revleing in the inferential racist dialouge of the superior, eurocentric culture and inferior "other", even in the most universal, of human things, food. I wonder what a Tiawanesse viewer would have thought.

It is the News and the News style programs which infuriate me the most, simpley because the inherent assumption (perhaps for a European New Zealander) is that they are impartial. This imperious eye that Hall discuses is not impartial, and I don't know if this will change, especially with the advent of digital T.V and the multiplication of channels.  It's not to hard to imagine channels for every "race" and culture, but what percentage of viewers of, say Maori T.V is non-Maori? Is it not better to encourage TVNZ as an institute to be run by an ethnicly diverse board? Any way, my rant is at an end, i'll try and be more coherant next time, any further discussion would be welcomed!

Difference in ‘The United Colours of Benetton’ advertising campaign

In the lecture about ‘Stereotypes and Positive Images’, I found the advertising campaign by the brand “United Colors of Benetton” to be rather interesting. At first glance the campaign seems to be a rather radical statement in representing fresh images that question the politics of racial relationships. However, these are images generated by a clothing company so one must ask what is their ultimate goal? And how do these images operate?

As mentioned in the lecture, Stuart Hall has found this campaign to be problematic. He highlights the central theme in the campaign to be a contrast of “difference” but questions whether this notion of difference is accurate to harsh realities, to their projections of profit, or whether it is a genuine attempt at a political statement. He uses the term “liberal mishmash” to describe what he questions are achieved in the images through a removal of all harsh realities of racism. I happen to agree with Hall, the central theme is difference and this is done not because it is a political statement but because it is a core principle of their brand.

I would argue that Benetton like the term ‘difference’ as it represents their own difference in their textile colours. Examples of this can be seen much stronger in the images where the product is not shown. In these images there is a stronger emphasis on a simplified notion of difference. A clear example would be the image with the black and white horse. I would argue that difference in this context is not a question of race, but the difference of colour. I also agree that the harshness of reality has been dissolved from the images. This is achieved through a simple extraction of a notion of time or place through the use of a white back-drop. The images then don’t offer a political statement on what specific issue of racism are but instead work to create a new fantasy world where races are misrepresented but in a fun and upbeat ‘positive’ kind of way.

As mentioned in the lecture Chris Barker argues that “positive images” fit into assimilations expectations of white society. The company, Benetton was founded in Italy in the year 1965. In a recent video created to celebrate 40 years of Benetton, a fast paced succession of Benetton advertisements flick through in the chronological order of 40 years in 40 seconds. This video has exemplified for me the notion of eurocentrism and the foundations of Benetton as a eurocentric company. The overall meta-text of the video seems like a positive and vibrant celebration of colour and difference, but looking at them slowly uncovers a corporation held by the ideologies of its time and to use Barker’s term positions Benetton’s foundations as a company into the assimilation expectations of a white company.

In Stuart Hall’s (1981) work entitled “The Whites of their Eyes”, Hall suggests that in order to make sense of social relations and our place in them we have to speak through “active ideologies” present in our society. (p. 9). Through the video Benetton does just this. In the early years, the mid 60s to late 70s the video shows adverts which favour white models. There is no representation to other ethnicities nor to the phrase “United Colours of Benetton” Instead there are white people having fun together in what looks like family snapshots. It is also interesting to note that there is a heavy reliance on language, Italian no doubt. These adverts portray a very conservative white middle-class image focused on capitalist ethnicities of London, New York and Italy.

When the advertisements from the early 80s flick past there is a dramatic change in who is included in the photo shoots. This Eurocentric company has begun to show larger groups of people from different ethnicities, all connected by holding hands or juxtaposed by overlapping their bodies. There is a change from Italian to American-English, presumably as the ‘universal’ language, and the first appearance of the phrase “United Colours of Benetton”.

I would suggest that this change in advertising occurs by speaking through, what Hall calls the “active ideologies” that are changing from the 60s to the 80s. I would suggest that perhaps there were changes in the company that made it become more corporate and aspire to the 80s notion of international corporatism whereby they attempted to cover-up their euro-centric foundations by assimilating positive international images of race to evoke the changing attitude about difference and colour in the world and to make their company seem more relevant and modern to their target market so as to raise their profits by creating a spectacle of difference for their company to unite a larger international market.