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… publishers set numerical targets for showing minorities and the disabled… Moreover, in filling these quotas, publishers screen out a wide range of images they deem stereotypical, from Asian math students to barefoot African children…
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“survivor, already has its problems, since the premise of the show is to live like the “primitive natives” of various islands (who rarely make an appearance—only to serve the contestants food or dance for them), and conquer survive their terrain…”
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“The underlying attitudes and comments about people of color that a TRA or IA hears in the home will affect an adoptees’ attitudes towards dating. How tragic it would be if a TRA or IA felt that dating someone their own race would not be accepted with t
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“…Given this difference many people tend to believe race and racism are natural and immutable—e.g. “people naturally like their own kind and there’s nothing that will change this.” In contrast, class is viewed as more dynamic…”
roamingknowmad wrote:
Re: Aiming for Diversity, Textbooks overshoot WSJ article - For an interesting take on this, check out Gawker’s post on this below:
http://www.gawker.com/news/publishing/devious-publishing-industry-cons-impressionable-children-into-believing-that-hispanics-are-friendly-wellgroomed-195908.php
I can just hear Lynn Cheney gunning her engines (or perhaps loading her shotgun?) on this one.
Casting able-bodied kids as kids in wheelchairs does rub me the wrong way (I think it creates an unrealistic standard of how ‘handicapped’ people should look), but I don’t think “overdiversifying” the texts is quite as ill as this article might imply.
The publishers here do seem to be missing the point a bit, in that their zeal for avoiding stereotypes seems to reinforce some of them - i.e. the notion that a Latino kid might not be “Latino enough” in appearance so someone else is used instead.
And, to piggyback on that example, exactly how is a kid looking at the photos supposed to be able to distinguish between a Dominican Latino with commonly held African American physical appearance and a Mexican Latino with a “typically Latino” appearance? There’s so many physical characteristics that are common to multiple ethnic groups. I really hope some little kid doesnt’ start saying to himself, Ok, that’s supposed to be a Latino boy, and I’m a Latino boy, but I don’t look like him? Does that mean I’m not a real Latino?
Well. Maybe I should just be happy that the industry is at least trying…
I went to elementary school in the mid to late 80s and during this time all my textbooks were of the mid-to late-70s vintage. My main memory of them is being really annoyed because all of the kids (who were a mix of colors and ethnicities, pretty progressive for the era, really) were wearing really ugly, out of date clothes.
Anyway. Back to work for me.
Posted 24 Aug 2006 at 3:28 pm ¶