{"id":23434,"date":"2018-02-20T23:50:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T23:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writemyessayfree.com\/anthropology-2"},"modified":"2017-08-03T16:10:27","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T16:10:27","slug":"anthropology-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/anthropology-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropology"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Anthropology<\/p>\n

Assigned reading 1 page summaries and 1 page outlines.<\/p>\n

HAPTER<\/p>\n

15<\/p>\n

The Hazards of Visibility
\u201cBiraciar\u2019:t Women, Media
Images, and Narratives of Identity
CAROLINE<\/p>\n

A.<\/p>\n

STREETER<\/p>\n

The republic of the United States is a society consumed by ideas of racial purity
and racial denial. Therefore, the United States is also replete with fascination
with racial mixing and racial difference.
\u2013<\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

n this chapter, I examine the topic of
biracial women through two lenses:
media images from the United States and
a small sample of creative writing and docu\u00ad
mentary videos produced by college-age
women from two University of California
campuses. We encounter an immediate
dilemma with regard to terminology because,
in media imagery, it is rarely possible to dis\u00ad
cern whether a woman depicted is \u201cbiracial,\u201d
that is, has two parents of different \u201craces.\u201d!
For that reason, I often use the more general
designation \u201cmixed-race,\u201d especially in the
first part of the chapter, which focuses on
print media.2 A second dilemma involves
why one needs to know, and how one goes<\/p>\n

Donna Haraway (1997)<\/p>\n

about determining, whether a woman
depicted in a media image is of mixed race.
To bring a quality of hypervigilance to the
visual markers of race entails participation in
the discourse that makes physical features
synonymous with racial classification. Even
if the goal is to ascertain \u201cmixedness,\u201d one
becomes engaged in an attempt to fix what
\u201cmixed\u201d looks like.
The discourse of race in U.S. media is heavily
weighted toward an understanding of race
relations that is limited to African Americans
and European Americans. In a cultural climate
in which the legibility of race is restricted to
\u201cblack\u201d and \u201cwhite,\u201d mixed-race people tend
to be imagined as black\/white or \u201cmulatto.\u201d<\/p>\n

301<\/p>\n

302<\/p>\n

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY<\/p>\n

Yet recent manifestations of racial\/ethnic
conflict such as the riots\/rebellions that took
place in Los Angeles 10 years ago clearly indi\u00ad
cate how inadequate that model is (Gooding\u00ad
Williams, 1993). Although in the world of
popular culture the black\/white racial
dichotomy continues to be exploited, in recent
decades many have jumped onto the lucrative
multicultural bandwagon. This phenomenon
has revolutionized media images, especially in
advertising. Led by the Italian clothing
company Benetton, advertisements increas\u00ad
ingly depict a wide range of ethnicities as well
as many types of multiracial people. The
visual pleasure provided by diverse ethnic
types, however, has disturbing antecedents in
19th century racial science and the ethnographic
photography that accompanied European
colonial expansion. The assumption that
\u201crace\u201d and \u201cmixed race\u201d can be determined
through the visual evidence of physical
features has been used repeatedl y to buttress
the logic of racial hierarchies. As the black
British photographer and writer David
A. Bailey (1989) has commented:
If we look at early anthropological photo\u00ad
graphy we can see the process of categori\u00ad
sation and construction of racial difference
in which cultures were either photogra-phed
voyeuristically within their homelands
(emphasizing physical features) or pho\u00b7
tographed and measured in studies. This is
reproduced in the Benetton campaign by the
categorisation of differences and the empha\u00ad
sis on physical features such as eyes, hair and
skin color. This emphasis on physical fea\u00ad
tures is also similar to the early medical and
police photographs of mental, physical
and social deviants. Likewise the framing
and cropping of the United Contrasts [sic} of
Benetton advertisements is very similar to
these earlier photographs. (p. 65)<\/p>\n

In addition to the troubling history
invoked by attempts to translate physical
features into racial \u201ctypes,\u201d the title of this<\/p>\n

chapter, \u201cthe hazards of visibility\u201d refers to
an ongoing debate about how media images
affect individuals and groups in society.
Although Census 2000 made it clear that the
United States has undergone dramatic demo\u00ad
graphic change, the implicit understanding of
an American as a white person of Western
European descent is not only deeply embed\u00ad
ded in our national narratives but also is
everywhere visible in media representations.
In other words, images of white people dom\u00ad
inate the visual culture that saturates our
everyday environment. The idea that media
images and the visual and textual narratives
they contain affect us, although seemingly a
commonsense notion, is controversial. I sug\u00ad
gest that although women and people of
color naturally enough wish to see them\u00ad
selves in the images with which all of us are
relentlessly bombarded, we must be vigilant
about the terms of our inclusion. Like ethnic
advocacy groups such as the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), organizations such as the
Association for MultiEthnic Americans
(AMEA) and Multiracial Americans of
Southern California (MASC), as well as mag\u00ad
azines aimed at multiracial individuals and
families like Interrace and Mavin consistently
applaud the increase in representations of
mixed-race people in media images as a pos\u00ad
itive development. I argue here that visibility
is a complex phenomenon that should
not be uncritically celebrated. As the word
\u201chazard\u201d indicates, a possible danger to
be carefully negotiated, the stream of media
images from which I analyze selected
examples can be considered a kind of traffic.
U.S. society is characterized by a formidable
traffic in media images, in which we all
may be said to participate but in which
the profits and benefits are very unevenly
distributed.
Many of the women in the media images
that I analyze can be called \u201cvirtual girls\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hazards of Visibility<\/p>\n

because their personal history is unknown to
the viewer. They exist solely on the level of
the image. By contrast, in the second part of
the chapter, I discuss \u201creal girls,\u201d exploring
media representations of the celebrity Mariah
Carey as well as writing and documentary
video by college-age women. The use of the
term biracial is more appropriate when we
have evidence of how people identify, espe\u00ad
cially when, as in the writing and video,
women draw substantially on autobiographi\u00ad
cal material. My analysis of texts that draw
on autobiography-the narratives of identity
to which the chapter\u2019s title refers-demon\u00ad
strates how young women deploy the tools of
feminist theory and antiracist activism to
engage what it means to inhabit a biracial
female body.<\/p>\n

THE METAPHOR DANCE:
WHEN DOES MULTICULTURAL
MEAN MULTIRACIAL?
Print images that feature mixed-race people
are a prominent example of the multicultural
representations that have become ubiquitous
in contemporary media. The ideology of mul\u00ad
ticulturalism that is referenced by such images
emphasizes the pleasurable aspects of ethnic
diversity without engaging the challenge of
cultural differences and the existence of racial
hierarchies and racial inequality. Multicultural
images that use multiracial people envision a
future that is free of such power struggles. In a
recent example that I discuss more thoroughly
later, in 1993 Time magazine imagined the
future U.S. population as represented by a
multiracial woman created through a com\u00ad
puter program, featured on the issue\u2019s cover.3
Time used the metaphor of the multicultural
society to update that of the melting pot.
Traditionally, the melting pot required ethnic
groups to assimilate to a generic American<\/p>\n

model. 4 The concept of a multicultural \u201cstew\u201d
might appear more inclusive than the melting
pot, in that it would allow for the survival of
ethnic particularity, influencing the definition
of \u201cAmerican\u201d rather than requiring the
burden of change to be fully borne by ethnic
\u201cothers.\u201d However, multiculturalism in the
hands of corporate interests has frequently
merely facilitated the commodification of
ethnic difference.
In media imagery the idealized future\u00ad
free of troubling difference and conflict-has
often been represented by a mixed-race child,
in a move that demonstrates how multicul\u00ad
tural ideology becomes represented by
images of multiracial people. This phenome\u00ad
non of conflation is especially evident when
images of mixed-race children are deployed
to represent visions of racial harmony
deemed unthreatening because they are so
\u201ccute.\u201d In one example, a Baby Gap ad pub\u00ad
lished in 0 (The Oprah Magazine) in May
2000 depicting an Afro-Asian baby girl rein\u00ad
forces the tenacious myth that mixed-race
children are \u201cnaturally\u201d the most beautiful
(Figure 15.1).
The media\u2019s fixation on beautiful children
of mixed descent provides an example of
why the increase in the number of visibly
racially mixed bodies depicted \u201cpositively\u201d
does not necessarily constitute a progres\u00ad
sive move in representation. Adorable images
do little to challenge the basis for social
inclusion.
Just as advertising photography deploys
strongly contrasting skin colors to signify
racial difference, it often uses \u201crainbow
imagery\u201d (intermediate skin tones) to portray
people of mixed descent. s In fact, rainbow
baby is a term used to describe racially mixed
children, particularly those of black and white
heritage. The ubiquity of phrases such as
\u201crainbow babies\u201d and \u201ccoffee-colored
children\u201d is indicative of the tendency to
infantilize the subject of mixed descent.<\/p>\n

303<\/p>\n

304<\/p>\n

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY<\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

Figure 15.1<\/p>\n

Baby GAP, 0 (The Oprah Magazine), May-June 2000<\/p>\n

An overriding concern for children, whether
articulated to caution against interracial rela~
rionships or to advocate for an institutional\u00ad
ized multiracial classification (Graham, 1996),<\/p>\n

dovetails with trends in advertising and
television, which are currently obsessed with
young models and actors, and the more ado\u00ad
lescent looking, the better (Hirschberg, 1999).<\/p>\n

The Hazards of Visibility<\/p>\n

As well, in this climate, \u201ceverybody\u2019s going for
the multi-ethnic girl\u201d (Namkung, 2000).
As I have mentioned, Time magazine gave
prominent visibility to a multiethnic girl in a
special issue published in fall 1993, although
this particular cover photo was computer
generated (Figure 15.2).
Time\u2019s cover consisted of a \u201cmorph\u201d based
on the projected future racial and ethnic com\u00ad
position of the u.s. population. According
to Time, \u201cthe image of (their) new Eve\u201d is
\u201c15% Anglo Saxon, 17.5% Middle Eastern,
17.5% African, 7.5% Asian, 35% Southern
European and 7.5% Hispanic\u201d (\u201cThe New
Face,\u201d 1993). Apparently, as Eve\u2019s face emerged
on the computer screen, Time\u2019s staff members
became heartbroken that \u201cshe doesn\u2019t exist\u201d
(\u201cThe New Face,\u201d 1993). However, the writer
Danzy Senna (1998) contends
Of course, anyone could see that women
just Eke the computer face they had created
did exist in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and
Spanish Harlem \u2026. As I read the article, it
reminded me of an old saying they used to
have down South during Jim Crow: \u2018If a
black man wants to sit in the front of the
bus, he just puts on a turban.\u2019 Maybe the
same rule applied here; call yourself mixed
and you just might find the world smiles a
little brighter on you. (p. 14)<\/p>\n

Senna\u2019s comments echo the suspicions of
black Americans who question the purpose of
a multiracial category, a critique influenced
by historical attempts on the part of individu\u00ad
als and groups to \u201cpass\u201d and become reclas\u00ad
sified as anything but black (or Negro or
colored).6 Likewise, Senna alludes to the
instability of visual markers of race as well as
to the importance of historical, geographic,
and cultural factors in determining racializa\u00ad
tion. 7 Her critique of the ways that mixed-race
people can escape the social prejudice that is
aimed at people of color brings to mind what
I call the \u201csafe hybridity,\u201d represented by
individuals who inhabit an intermediate racial<\/p>\n

category. In fact, my juxtaposition of the
terms safe and hybridity is intentionally para\u00ad
doxical. Hybridity as conceptualized by post\u00ad
colonial theorists such as Trinh T. Minh-ha
and Homi Bhabha cannot be safe. Bhabha
has remarked, \u201cA strategy of hybridization
does not celebrate cultural diversity, it cele\u00ad
brates \u2026 cultural difference\u201d (Trinh, 1999,
p. 28). However, the hybridization that is
practiced by the Time magazine cover is emp\u00ad
tied of political content through its celebra\u00ad
tion as mere curiosity-a high-tech feat. Time
reduces hybridity to horticulture; the meaning
of the woman\u2019s face is limited to her (sexually
attractive) blended features.
The words on Time\u2019s cover make it clear
that Eve is not racially \u201cpure\u201d; \u201cTake a good
look at this woman. She was created by a
computer from a mix of several races.\u201d When
we consider the iconic status of blue-eyed,
blonde-haired, and white-skinned femininity,
not just in the United States but throughout
western European and Latin American coun\u00ad
tries, Time\u2019s rendering of the representative
American woman of the future as an olive\u00ad
skinned brunette with hazel eyes could be con\u00ad
sidered progressive. s Nevertheless, some have
contended that the image looks like a white
woman. 9 Like Danzy Senna, others disagreed
with the Time staff\u2019s lament that their Eve
does not exist, finding her ethnicity conceiv\u00ad
able, albeit ambiguous. My mixed-race friends
and I concurred that Eve\u2019s hair was quite
intriguing. While it is not wavy, its texture
hints at a fuzziness that will be familiar to the
parents of rainbow babies. Yet the magazine\u2019s
cover elides the topic of miscegenation, allow\u00ad
ing the apparently more palatable multicul\u00ad
tural to stand in for multiracial. The magazine
text invokes the narrative of immigration to
account for the multiracial and multiethnic
composition of their cover girl: \u201cWhat you see
is a remarkable preview of \u2026 The New Face
of America. How Immigrants Are Shaping the
World\u2019s First Multicultural Society.\u201d<\/p>\n

305<\/p>\n

306<\/p>\n

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY<\/p>\n

1
!<\/p>\n

Figure 15.2<\/p>\n

Time Magazine, Fall 1993
The Hazards of Visibility<\/p>\n

Time\u2019s article explaining how the morphing
program worked was accompanied by a grid
of photographs illustrating examples of the
program\u2019s generation of the \u201cprogeny\u201d of 14
men and women of various racial and ethnic
backgrounds. The grid, appearing under
the title \u201cRebirth of a Nation-Computer
Style,\u201d makes a cultural reference that should
give us pause. D. W. Griffith\u2019s silent film of
1915 The Birth of a Nation repudiated the
outcome of the United States\u2019 Civil War,
especially the Reconstruction Era, during
which newly enfranchised black Americans
voted and held office in the southern states.
The film\u2019s vicious racial stereotypes, includ\u00ad
ing rapacious black men who preyed on
white virgins as well as corrupt and over\u00ad
sexed mulattoes, had an enduring influence
on American cinema. As Lauren Berlant has
commented, Time\u2019s reference to the film is
simultaneously innocuous and deeply trou\u00ad
bling. 1o For my purposes here, Time\u2019s
\u201cFreudian slip\u201d is especially meaningful
because it betrays the extent to which
ambivalence about miscegenation, which,
in The Birth of a Nation, was the most
depraved result of black emancipation, per\u00ad
sists in contemporary discourse about race.
Judging by the images of mixed-race prog\u00ad
eny in Time\u2019s \u201cRebirth of a Nation\u201d grid,
gender categories presented unexpected com\u00ad
plications for a computer program written to
mimic biological reproduction. Many of the
photos struggle for gender determinacy, and
it is frequently difficult to tell whether the
morph is male or female without looking
at the \u201cparents,\u201d in which case the hairstyle
seems most determinative of \u201cgender.\u201d It is
intriguing that the computer program would
create ambiguously gendered offspring from
images of men and women, undermining the
myth of heterosexual normativity, at least in
cyberspace! Because the parameters by which<\/p>\n

the program functioned are so different from
those that drive genetic reproduction, it seems
curious that Time\u2019s staff felt compelled to
mimic heterosexual reproduction. Why not
morph women with women and men with
men? Would \u201cgay\u201d and \u201clesbian\u201d parents
render offspring with a more easily identifi\u00ad
able gender? In fact, Time\u2019s unambiguously
female Eve was created by morphing the fea\u00ad
tures of all seven of the women used to pro\u00ad
duce their \u201cRebirth of a Nation\u201d chart.
In addition to virtual miscegenation, Time
highlights what is actually called \u201ccrossbreed\u00ad
ing\u201d in their tex\u201d!: real live adults in interracial
relationships and the children born from these
unions. The subjects are presented in a format
similar to the virtual morphs on Time\u2019s cover
image and in their \u201cRebirth of a Nation\u201d grid,
photographed with seemingly nude torsos and
looking directly into the camera lens, fully
available to the viewer. ll Looking at these
images, one experiences the unsettling yet irre\u00ad
sistible urge to compare the real-life \u201cmixed
breeds\u201d with their morphed counterparts and
to note which physical features the children
have inherited from their parents. The com\u00ad
pulsion to focus on the physical characteris\u00ad
tics, especially the face of a person, is precisely
the impulse that advertising that features
mixed-race women plays on.<\/p>\n

REBIRTH OF A NATION
Advertising makes explicit the routes by
which persons might individually and collec\u00ad
tively give a name to their desire (Berlant,
1997, p. 11).
An ad from the clothing designer Calvin
Klein\u2019s campaign for the fragrance cKone
highlights the ways that ethnic mystery
becomes a sign of miscegenation in an image
that emphasizes the vulnerable and available<\/p>\n

307<\/p>\n

308<\/p>\n

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY<\/p>\n

sexuality of a mixed-race woman. In this
way, the cKone ad metaphorically fulfills the
expectations raised by advertising that eroti\u00ad
cizes interracial couplesY In the full-page
photograph, three quarters of the space is
devoted to a close-up image of the face and
throat of a young woman with an Afro\u00ad
Asian appearance, flanked by a partial image
of a fragrance bottle (Figure 15.3).
Lighting in the photograph emphasizes
the model\u2019s skin, especially its golden, lumi\u00ad
nous quality. Her skin is a shade that could
be described as maple or honey, a color that
is clearly located in the continuum between
black and white.
An image of an Afro-Asian woman evokes
a different kind of biracial subject, one whose
existence was not the object of antimiscegena\u00ad
tion law in the United States. As Phillip Brian
Harper has observed, \u201cThe centrality of the
white subject\u2019s interest in the phenomenon of
miscegenation is indicated by the dictionary
definition of the term, which characterizes it as
denoting especially \u2018marriage between white
and non-white persons\u201dm (p. 31). Instead, the
model\u2019s \u201chapa\u201d features conjure histories of
American imperialism and military occupations
in Asia as well as relationships between Asian
women and black American soldiers. 14 The
photograph is composed to expose the model
to the viewer; the hollow in her throat and her
graceful, yet fragile neck signal vulnerability.!S
If there was any doubt as to her sexual avail\u00ad
ability, the woman\u2019s alleged contact informa\u00ad
tion appears in the lower third of the image.
The phrase ..e-mail: kristy@cKone.com..
updates the proverbial scrawl in the bathroom
stall for the Internet age (i.e., \u201cFor a good time
call \u2026 \u201c).16 That \u201cKristy\u201d strongly resembles
a grown-up version of the little girl in the Baby
Gap ad should come as no surprise. Although
rainbow babies are celebrated as signs of racial
harmony, the taboo of interracial sexuality
lurking in their genetic make-up becomes
full-blown in erotic images of mixed-race
women.<\/p>\n

At the same time, some advenisements
represent alternative possibilities for the Baby
Gap girl child\u2019s future. In the winter of
1998-1999, an ad campaign by Levi\u2019s capi\u00ad
talized on discourses of multiculturalism by
making racial ambiguity representative of a
different type of fantasy. Rather than offering
the consumer the illusion of unfettered sexual
access to a mixed-race woman, this campaign
positioned her as the embodiment of post\u00ad
civil rights era idealism, making consumption
of her image a surrogate for antiracist
activism. The campaign featured teenagers
from a variety of ethnic backgrounds holding
placards inscribed with phrases. One image
depicted a young black man with dread\u00ad
locks holding a sign proclaiming, \u201cConformity
Breeds Mediocrity.\u201d Another showed a
Latino with a placard that declared, \u201cLatinos
Presente.\u201d In a third ad, two teenagers, one
male and one female, both of indeterminate
ancestry, held a sign saying \u201cWe Are One.\u201d
The image that immediately drew my atten\u00ad
tion was of a young woman holding a sign
inscribed with the words, \u201cI can\u2019t be Prejudice
[sicJ, I\u2019m Mulatto [sic]\u201d (Figure 15.4). The
motto of the campaign-the phrase \u201cWhat\u2019s
True\u201d-was visible on the lower right side of
each advertisement.
The first time I saw these Levi\u2019s ads (in
San Francisco in December 1998), only
the \u201cmulatto\u201d images had been mounted.
Multiple larger-than-life sized posters of the
teenage girl were plastered over wooden
partitions that were being used to delineate
the construction site around a building in
the Mission District (a working class Latino
neighborhood undergoing intense gentrifica\u00ad
tion). The young woman\u2019s hair made me nos\u00ad
talgic for my own teen years, when I wore an
Afro \u201cas big as a rain cloud. \u201c17 Only later did
I realize that the ad was one of a series. By the
time I attempted to track them down to make
photographs approximately 2 months later,
they had all but disappeared. Although I
eventually found all four images in an alley in<\/p>\n

The Hazards of Visibility<\/p>\n

Figure 15.3<\/p>\n

Calvin Klein, Vibe Magazine, August 1999<\/p>\n

. downtown San Francisco, they had been
with the word uno, which obscured
phrases on the signs held by each model. IS
My Own initial surprise at seeing the word
mulatto used in an ad is typical of the lack of<\/p>\n

consensus about terms that mark identity. ]
joke with my friends that mulatto, unlike
words such as black, nigger, queer, faggot, or
even girl, has not been rehabilitated. By the
same token, I have encountered young<\/p>\n

309<\/p>\n

310<\/p>\n

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY<\/p>\n

Figure 15.4<\/p>\n

Levi-Strauss Billboard Photographed in downtown San Francisco by Caroline A.
Streeter, February 1999<\/p>\n

people of mixed blacklwhite descent who
embrace mulatto, feeling that it describes
their heritage in a succinct and accurate way.
I e-mailed the office of consumer services at
Levi\u2019s to ask how they made decisions
regarding the language used in the billboards.
They responded:<\/p>\n

In the \u201cWhat\u2019s True\u201d campaign we gave a
forum to all different types of people. The
campaign represents diversity in thoughts,
ideas and style, which is what the Levi\u2019s\u00ae
brand is all about. We didn\u2019t use models or
actors and the spots are unscripted, unedited,
and spontaneous. They were created with<\/p>\n

The Hazards of Visibility<\/p>\n

teens off the street-not in a studio\u2013speaking
candidly about what \u201ctrue\u201d means to them.
The assertion that an advertising cam\u00ad
paign is \u201cunscripted, unedited and sponta\u00ad
neous\u201d is misleading to say the least. In fact,
Levi\u2019s response to my query could be inter\u00ad
preted to mean that the models are not even
wearing the company\u2019s clothing. More\u00ad
over, the girl in the mulatto ad looks very
groomed; she wears makeup and has mani\u00ad
cured nails, and her hair appears styled to
embody a particular aesthetic that is associ\u00ad
ated with rainbow babies, brushed out to
emphasize its volume and texture.
What of Levi\u2019s claim that the ads feature
teenagers \u201coff the street \u2026 speaking can\u00ad
didly?\u201d Although the mixed-race girl in the
Levi\u2019s image may indeed describe herself as
mulatto, I doubt that Levi\u2019s had no influence in
the conception of the phrase that she allegedly
\u201ccreated\u201d herself. By composing the ad in
this way, Levi\u2019s states that \u201cthe truth\u201d is that
racially mixed people \u201ccan\u2019t be prejudice,\u201d a
statement that makes the mixed-race subject
the embodiment of liberation from racial dis\u00ad
crimination. The idea that the mixed-race child
represents the elimination of prejudice is part
of a utopian dream adopted by many political
activists during the civil rights movement.
When young people from all over the United
States went south to work in voter registration
drives (especially during the summer of 1964),
blacks and whites worked and socialized
together, and became lovers (Evans, 1979).
This was the nightmare that the segregationists
had warned about. Such activity also con\u00ad
tributed to the seductive mythology that if
people could transcend racial barriers in their
private lives, the elimination of society\u2019s racism
would follow. In this sense, Levi\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s
True\u201d image of a mixed-race teenage girl is the
alternative grown-up depiction of the Afro\u00ad
Asian child in the Baby Gap ad. Rather than
exploiting the lure of sexual availability, the
image promises liberation from social injustice.<\/p>\n

Yet the Levi\u2019s notion of mulattoes relies on
celebratory and ahistorical rhetoric that elides
the vexed strategies that racially mixed sub\u00b7
jects have deployed to negotiate hierarchies of
race and color. 19 This kind of multicultural
imagery makes racially mixed people symbolic
embodiments of antidiscrimination while
using their images to mask persistent race\u00b7
based inequalities. 20 The Levi\u2019s discourse also,
oddly enough, solidly reinforces the authority
of the \u201cone-drop rule.\u201d This occurs through
the spelling \u201cerror\u201d in the sentence \u201cI can\u2019t be
prejudice, I\u2019m mulatto.\u201d The phrase evokes
Ebonies, or Black English, thus inscribing
blackness as effectively as the girl\u2019s Afro,21
The muddled messages in the advertisement
also point to the contradictory expectations
that Americans harbor for miscegenation.
Although the outcome, mixed-race people, are
expected to free the society of prejudice, they
are as subject to being defined in racialized
terms as anyone. Because we are confused
about what racism is\u2013Is it the articulation of
taboo words? The dissemination of negative
images?-it is difficult to gauge when racial
language or imagery is problematic.<\/p>\n

RAINBOW BABY<\/p>\n

In the transition to thinking about \u201creal
girls,\u201d I begin with an analysis of the media\u2019s
discourse about the well-known celebrity
Mariah Carey. Carey is a unique example
because her image transformed quite literally
from white to black before our very eyes, a
process exhaustively documented in the
mainstream and African-American media
over the past decade. 22 When her first album
was released (1990), Carey\u2019s record company
marketed her as a pop singer with no dearly
defined ethnic identity. Like the biracial
actress Jennifer Beals, Carey\u2019s ambiguous fea\u00ad
tures enabled her to remain racially unclassi\u00ad
fied, (synonymous with being white in<\/p>\n

311<\/p>\n

312<\/p>\n

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY<\/p>\n

America). As Carey\u2019s fame grew, journalists
delving into her background soon \u201cdis\u00ad
covered\u201d that she is biracial, with a
European-American mother and a father of
African-American and Venezuelan heritage. 23
Much was made of Carey\u2019s \u201cpassing,\u201d partic\u00ad
ularly by black journalists, and articles about
her began to routinely comment on her mixed
heritage as well as her attempts to articulate a
biracial subjectivity.24 Once she had been
\u201couted,,25 Carey\u2019s music videos began to shift
from rainbow imagery (with children of diverse
races26 ) to representations that prominently
featured black men. She also began collabo\u00ad
rating with male and female rap and hip-hop
artists on her albums. Carey\u2019s divorce from
the white record executive Tommy Mottola
(almost two decades her senior) after a 5-year
marriage seems to have accelerated her emer\u00ad
gence as a black female celebrity. Since her
divorce in 1998, she has made appearances at
venues such as the NAACP Image Awards,
pursued high-profile collaborations with
African American artists, and been linked
romantically to a number of black male
celebritiesY In addition, her image on maga\u00ad
zine covers and in music videos became
significantly more sexual. Magazines in
particular repeatedly alluded to her single
status and sexual desirability.28 Like the
cKone ads using mixed-race models, refer\u00ad
ences to Carey\u2019s biracial heritage functioned
to increase her sexual allure. 29
Mariah Carey\u2019s racialized sexuality is the
potent and unstable flash point that renders
her image perpetually troubling. The confla\u00ad
tion of Carey\u2019s racial heritage and her sexual\u00ad
ity became pop cultural fodder in arenas such
as the performer Sandra Bernhard\u2019s one\u00ad
woman show, I\u2019m Still Here \u2026 Damn It!
(which I saw live in San Francisco in 1999).30
Bernhard\u2019s comments on Carey demonstrate
how race can be sexualized and sexuality
raced. In a voice dripping with sarcasm,
Bernhard related, \u201cMariah\u2019s been getting a<\/p>\n

little niggerish on us \u2026 she been seeing those
rap stars and saying oh yeah baby do it, do
it \u2026 give me some of that big black dick!\u201d In
Bernhard\u2019s discourse, Carey assumes a posi\u00ad
tion analogous to how white women are
often depicted in advertising that features
black male\/white female interracial couples:
eroticized as the light-skinned vessel for a
\u201cbig black dick.\u201d3! Bernhard\u2019s humor simul\u00ad
taneously frames Carey as a white-looking
woman and a mulatta subject, exploiting her
racial ambiguity to fuel stereotypical images of
white women and black men in interracial rela\u00ad
tionships as well as insatiable mulatta sexual\u00ad
ity. Carey herself offered astute commentary
on Bernhard\u2019s monologue:
Sandra Bemhard used words that every
African American I know-and definitely I,
personally, find inappropriate. If my skin
were two shades darker, she wouldn\u2019t have
done it\u2026. (C)alling me a \u201cphony white
bitch\u201d and saying I was \u201cacting niggerish\u201d is
acceptable because she figures, \u201cWho\u2019s
gonna stick up for her?\u201d I think she perceives
me as white, which is a common perception.
And yeah, I\u2019m a freaking mutt, I\u2019m a triracial
freak, but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthropology Assigned reading 1 page summaries and 1 page outlines. HAPTER 15 The Hazards of Visibility \u201cBiraciar\u2019:t Women, Media Images, and Narratives of Identity CAROLINE A. STREETER The republic of the United States is a society consumed by ideas of Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}