COMING 2 AMERICA 2B WINNING

If you are in another country dreaming of coming to the land of the free, it's not likely that your dreams contain positive images of black and brown people --not if you are looking at White American news, White American television, and White American movies. So when people from other countries come to the U.S. they are coming here fulling intending to align themselves with the winning team, the white people. --- not the lazy, stupid, criminal black and brown Americans they've seen transmitted into their home country.

As I've said before, a few people that I've known over the years, born elsewhere have informed me that, when they first came to America, they expected all the black people to be criminals. They were actually surprised to meet black people who have jobs, children they take care of, fathers living in the home with their children. 

It may surprise some to learn that some of the foreigners coming to America are surprised that Black Americans are normal human beings with average amounts of love, pettiness, generosity, and greed attached to their souls are not only white people from Europe.

Part of the strife between Black Americans and Africans in America is born of the absorption of anti-black stereotypes prior to arrival in the United States. Black people from the Caribbean can look down on American Blacks as well

But I don't want to put all the blame for anti-blackness or anti-black-american-ness at the feet of white people.  Human beings like to look down on other human beings. In the United States in 21st century the social order has white people on top. People coming to the United States from all other countries, predominantly white, black, asian, etc., all of them want to align themselves with the winning team when they get here. Black and brown people just aren't the exception we'd like them to be. 

When the Irish came to the United States they were depicted as monkeys and such in the newspaper. They were truly discriminated against and were not considered "white." Italians weren't always considered white either.  But the Irish,  **using the enemy of my enemy is my friend** technique, were rapidly able to become white.  What the Irish did was yell their hatred of blacks to the roof tops, change their clothes, and lose their accent and a claim to whiteness was theirs.

And the closer to white, in appearance, you are, the more likely you are to be successful at joining the socially winning team called "white people."  But as I stated above, dark-skinned people like Africans can also join whiteness by declaring a common frenemy.  And there are all sorts of dog whistles a light-skinned or dark-skinned foreigner can blow to declare themselves.

And I think we, as people of color, have to do a better job looking out for those who want our support but don't want to support us back. We crave unity. And that's a good thing. But there are black and brown people, light and dark, that only see us as bodies to stand upon to raise themselves up.



More to come in Part 2http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/09/does-coming-2-america-2-win-means.html

Updated 9 15 16

ZOE SALDANA, RACHEL DOLEZEL AND ILLEGITIMACY OF WHITE FORMULATED BLACKNESS

"Even as we each embrace our own beautiful, unique, and valid versions of our blackness.  Remember the tie that does bind us as African Americans 

And that is our particular awareness

• of injustice
• and unfairness
• and struggle

That means we cannot sleepwalk through life

We cannot be ignorant of history

We cannot meet the world with a sense of entitlement

~ President Barack Obama

Commencement Speech, 2016

Our President is correct. Black people are not monolithic yet we have some points of commonality that cannot be denied. Zoe Saldana has not only attempted to deny that there are things that black people share, but she has also denied that race is real, that blackness is real, and has also therefore implied that the socialization of blackness is not real.

But blackness is real. Being a Black American is a real thing. You know what else is real? Whiteness and white racial perspective.

EXHIBIT A: SLEEP WALKING THROUGH LIFE
Saldana 2013

"I find it uncomfortable to have to speak about my identity all of the time, when in reality it’s not something that drives me or wakes me up out of bed everyday....

I literally run away from people that use words like ethnic. It’s preposterous! To me there is no such thing as people of color cause in reality people aren’t white. Paper is white. People are pink, it’s a bit ridiculous when I have to explain to a human being, that is an adult like I am, that looks intelligent but for some reason I have to question his intelligence and explain to him as if he was a two year old, my composition in order for him to say, “Oh I guess I can chill with you, I can work with you.” I will not underestimate a human being and I will not allow another human being to underestimate me. I feel like as a race, that’s a minute problem against the problems we face just as women versus men, in a world that’s more geared and designed to cater towards the male species.

Zoe Saldana Claims People Of Color Don't Exist

This is the white colorblind approach to race which has been identified by numerous scholars as a form of racism itself.  

EXHIBIT B: IGNORANT OF OUR HISTORY
SALDANA 2015

Saldana's Reasoning As Evidence of White Socialization

If we question why Michael has been cast to play the Human Torch in Fantastic Four then we must also question why Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra, why Angelina Jolie played Mariane Pearl in a Mighty Heart, why Laurence Olivier played Othello, Burt Lancaster in Apache, and the list goes on....and on....

Is Zoe Saldana Walking Talking Proof That Race Is A Social Construct?

You know what?  White people, Zoe Saldana, and very few others try to compare these particular apples and oranges.

The Human Torch was a cartoon character created in United States during a more overtly racist time period. Now that 1960s white comic book heroes moving from comic books to 21st century movies, black and brown people are being added to the casts -- something that wouldn't be necessary if white racism hadn't eliminated black and brown people from comics in the first place.

Some black people, as we are not monolithic, may not agree with changing the Human Torch into a black character. That's neither here nor there. But it's pretty much only white people and Zoe Saldana that do not understand casting white people as black and real brown people and characters like "Othello", even using black face to do it, is a facet of white supremacy.
EXHIBIT C: 
MEET THE WORLD WITH A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT
SALDANA 2016

The other side of white washing a movie Finding black actresses that aren't too black, even when the actress is playing
Nina Simone

 
Two months after Zoe Saldana's movie "Nina" flopped at the box office, just like the movies " "Exodus:Gods and Kings," " Aloha," and "Gods of Egypt" before it, Saldana decided to give an interview to a magazine to shout about her blackness to the world.

Please note that Saldana did not go to EBONY Magazine to do  this interview on her blackness

Nor did Saldana did not go to ESSENCE Magazine to do this interview on her blackness

Saldana did not go to VIBE, JET, BET or even mostly white OPRAH Magazine to do an interview on her blackness.

Nope. Saldana took her new blackness to the very nearly entirely white ALLURE Magazine --which,  I believe, has a relatively new Asian Editor. If she is new and Asian, shame on her. She hasn't made a dent in the magazines overwhelming whiteness judging by her willingness to showcase Saldana's mixture of arrogance and ignorance on race in general and being a black woman specifically.

A couple of brown dots here and there. But mostly white females adorn these magazine covers.
Judge the styling of Saldana's photos for yourself

"The very idea that Saldana could be considered too pretty to play Simone seems to make the actress more sad than defensive.

"I never saw her as unattractive. Nina looks like half my family!" she says. "But if you think the [prosthetic] nose I wore was unattractive, then maybe you need to ask yourself, What do youconsider beautiful? Do you consider a thinner nose beautiful, so the wider you get, the more insulted you become?" 

Did you know that Halle Berry was once told that she was too beautiful to play a slave?

Can you guess who it might have been that told Halle was too beautiful to play a slave.? (I'll give you a hint. It's the demographic who likes to pretend white massa wasn't raping and producing bi-racial children by the boat loads from the beginning of slavery until well past the official end of slavery.) 

You get three guesses at who told Halle Berry she was too beautiful to play a slave. Was it...

A) Black Women
B) Asian Men
C) White People


Can you guess who it might have been that told Zoe she was too beautiful to play Nina, that the issue was that the nose prosthetic is ugly -- and that this is why people object to her playing Nina Simone?
Three choices
A) Black Women
B) Asian Men
C) White People

Can you guess who it is Zoe hangs around with, is socialized by, day in and day out for most of her life? 

Three choices
A) Black Women
B) Asian Men
C) White People

The answers are likely. C,C,C
(We won't talk about some of the black men in Hollywood, never seen with anything darker than a paper bag. That's a different story for a different day)

Do you know who black women should be yelling at over doing something as ignorant as wearing black face and a nose prosthetic to play a black icon like Nina Simone? 

A white woman.

  

Do you know who black people should be(are) arguing with over using black face just like white characters did 60 years ago when the United States more overtly racist?

White people 

Thousands, if not millions of black women have been screaming one thing at Saldana: You do not put on black face to play a black woman that having problems being accepted in her own country due to how black she was, how dark-skinned she was, and how black her features were. 

But what does Zoe think the issue is?  

That OTHER PEOPLE THINK
she's too beautiful 

(because of her white features) 

Conclusion: Zoe Saldana has been socialized to be a white girl. Rachel Dolezal was as well. Biology is not the issue as far as either one's claims to being a black woman. Neithr one gets that. One is as ignorant as the other from opposite sides of the same coin.

In her interviews on race, at the very least, Saldana portrays herself as thinking, acting, talking, and entitling herself to anything she sees and wants just like the liberal white racists among white people. 

Read More:
http://www.allure.com/celebrity-trends/cover-shoot/2016/zoe-saldana-interview


To me, Saldana's latest interview makes it even clearer that she thinks it is her skin color that automatically gives her the right to call herself a black woman. But she's wrong.

Race is not biology.
While I see claiming black racial identity as a personal choice, it ought to be based on your black experience as a black person and not what's convenient for you when you are about to star in a movie or when you want to add legitimacy to your running a NAACP Chapter, among other things  

Saldana has denied race and blackness in a way that sounds very much like colorblind racism, which is often anti-black. She talks about racist acts as if they are not racist, denies the acting out of racism (the acts of others and her own) all as if she's a white woman herself. Either she thinks her fitting into the white beauty aesthetic is why BLACK PEOPLE think she is too pretty play Nina Simone OR she has only consulted white people who think she's not right to play Nina Simone because she's too pretty.

"There's no one way to be black," she says quietly and slowly, clearly choosing her words carefully. "I'm black the way I know how to be. You have no idea who I am. I am black. I'm raising black men. Don't you ever think you can look at me and address me with such disdain."

"There is no one way to be black." This statement is absolutely true. But you can turn anything into a cliche'. And she's done that with "There's no one way to be black." However there are a bunch of ways to act out whiteness (and white colorblind racism at that) and Zoe Saldana has touched on a few of them.
To me, it's clear that Zoe Saldana has been socialized as a white person complete with denials of the various facets of white supremacy. And as far as her claims of raising black men go? I hope she renames one of her children Tiger and the other one Woods.

Again this is not about her biology.


President Obama has a white parent and does not have her problem. He's was even raised by white people and yet he's still clearly black and accepted as black. Jesse Williams has a white parent and does not share her problem. He's black. Halle Berry has a white parent and does not share Saldana's problem. She's black.  Zendaya is accepted as black. There are even biracial people who don't necessarily identify as "Black," that identify as "bi-racial" instead that do not share the problem of having been socialized into being a mildly racist white person.

Zendaya, Jesse Williams, Thandie Newton

And all of these black biologically bi-racial people have done and said things that other black people do not agree with -- just as famous black people with two black parents have. Yet they are accepted as part of us, as black, as people that don't deliberately steal from and degrade us while NOT US as Zoe did when she made "Nina" in black face.

Saldana's problems are NOT biological. They are sociological. 

That is, who Saldana talks to, hangs out with, and learns life from is creating a very white problem for her -- unawareness of her own belief in, and reinforcement of,  white supremacy.


Zoe Saldana thinks the main issue is that we don't know who she is. It's clear to me that she doesn't know who we are, who black people are. She's saying she belongs to us, to our group, and then hasn't got 1/2 an ear to listen to what we, supposedly the ones she would call "sister" and "brother" are saying to her about using black face to play Nina Simone.

She went to a white magazine to have her say about her blackness so as to get support from white people, the ones whose opinion counts on blackness.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

I'm pretty sure I'm ready to boycott any movie with her in it. No more "Star Trek" for me, I think.

IS ZOE SALDANA WALKING, TALKING PROOF THAT RACE IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT?

Zoe Saldana's attitude toward black women's objections to her playing Nina Simone should be showing us all that her skin tone and the African blood she's gotten from her parents and grandparents have very little to do with who she is, racially/ethnically speaking

In my opinion, Saldana has shown us all that not only is she correct in not claiming to be a black American but she has also shown us that she's pretty much been socialized to be an entitled, colorblind, white woman.

I can't really parse her stance any other way. Can you?

1) WHITE ENTITLEMENT

Saldana has basically been saying,

I AM ENTITLED to
NOT IDENTIFY as black
yet play a black woman
who VERY MUCH identified as black
because I WANT to honor MY African Heritage
while calling ignorant*
the thousands of black women who have said
we don't want you to represent US.


This is very much like white entitlement. In fact, I think it is white entitlement.

Who else but white people think they are entitled to erase racial others? How is her attitude much different from the white men that produced "Gods Of Egypt," starring white men? (a movie that is also flopping - yippee!!!)





Saldana's behaving just like that white woman who had lived as a white woman white for 30 years before finding out that her great, great, great, great grandfather was a Native American. She decided it was not cultural appropriation when she found a Native American headdress to work on Halloween because she believes that 1) race is biology rather than sociology and that 2) respect for a racial/ethnic group not her own is irrelevant and subordinate to whatever makes her feel whole or simply entertained at any given moment---same as Saldana








Saldana clearly believes in critical aspects of colorblind race theory, which has been identified by most sociologists as a form of racism practiced most often by white people.


Saldana appears to have decided to not-see that her skin tone and her white features are the very thing Nina Simone did not have that would have made her quasi-acceptable in white society? Or if Saldana does see it, she's decided that this is so small an affect that black face and a nose prosthetic will cover it. Isn't this denial of outcome a form of racism/colorism blindness taken directly from colorblind race theory?

It seems to me that white people deny different life outcomes based on skin color most often, with light people like Vanessa Williams doing it too often for my taste too. But, aside from white people, I am beginning to think that those claiming blackness/African-ness who are NOT socialized as black people by black parent(s) proud who are proud to be black have their toes sunk into colorblind racism as deeply as any white person might.

Saldana actually used Elizabeth Taylor's portraying Cleopatra as evidence that what she's doing now is okay because it's "art"  The likely reason she didn't list God's Of Egypt casting as a-okay with her is because it didn't occur to her.


Read More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/11/zoe-saldana-nina-simone-criticism_n_7564452.html

If most people had only read her words and had never seen a photo of Saldana, most would believe that she is an entitled, possibly racist, white woman.





Saldana's own words: 

If we question why Michael has been cast to play the Human Torch in Fantastic Four then we must also question why Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra, why Angelina Jolie played Mariane Pearl in a Mighty Heart, why Laurence Olivier played Othello, Burt Lancaster in Apache, and the list goes on....and on....

Zoe Saldana 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/11/zoe-saldana-nina-simone-criticism_n_7564452.html?utm_hp_ref=black-voices





Women of color DO question all of these things. 
And many, if not most, people of color do not equate the e-race-sure of black and brown people from their own real stories WITH a black actor playing a white cartoon character that was created during the decades and decades of ComicbooksSoWhite.

After reading this ignorant explanation of her position, is it any wonder that Saldana

1) saw nothing much wrong with donning black face to play Nina Simone

2) thinks of Nina's black looks as not much more important to the story than proper costuming. 

Saldana does not identify as a black woman. She does not deserve to identify as a black woman. And she does not deserve to be cast as a black woman because she's not a black woman and presents like a white woman.
Her colorblind-white-person attitude almost has to be directly linked to the environment she was raised in and lives in now.

So let us imagine a Brittany Spears look-a-like finding out that she was the real Kunta Kinte's distant cousin, 100 times removed. Imagine Brittany-alike decides she can play Nina Simone in black face because of new her biological racial identity.  Saldana might be (slightly) better casting as Simone (To me, black face is black face on a white face or on a light face.) But what is more important than that is trying to imagine white Brittany-alike coming up with an argument that is one iota different from Saldana's current argument.





I really can't come up with a thing that might be different in the Spears-alike argument. 
And I know why I can't imagine the arguments being different from one another. 

The arguments wouldn't be different because Zoe Saldana has been socialized, in some significant ways, to be what's usually recognized as a white woman in the United States.


You don't have to explain to most light-skinned black women or light-skinned women of color that "Black face is black face." 999 times out of 1,000 you only have to explain THAT to white women.


All of this together makes Zoe Saldana walking, talking, living proof that race is not biology but sociology, that race is, indeed, a sociological construct.  


When anybody talks to Saldana or about her, they should understand that they are not talking to a black woman, that they are not talking to a woman of color, but a white woman with a confusing outward appearance. 

I'm not usually into saying who is really black and who isn't black. And I'm not here since Saldana has already said she doesn't identify as black. But what I am saying is that it is questionable that she should even be welcomed into the group we call "Women Of Color."

Maybe she's just an airhead. But this smells like an everything white-is-right belief system to me. If she should get drunk and start spouting white supremacist garbage it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

 

SO HOW MUCH AFRICAN IS IN THE AVERAGE AFRICAN AMERICAN?

Exactly How "Black" Are Black Americans?

* According to Ancestry.com, the average African American is 65 percent sub-Saharan African, 29 percent European and 2 percent Native American.

* According to 23andme.com, the average African American is 75 percent sub-Saharan African, 22 percent European and only 0.6 percent Native American. 

* According to Family Tree DNA.com, the average African American is 72.95 percent sub-Saharan African, 22.83 percent European and 1.7 percent Native American.

* According to National Geographic's Genographic Project, the average African American is 80 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 1 percent Native American.

* According to AfricanDNA, in which I am a partner with Family Tree DNA, the average African American is 79 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 2 percent Native American.

 [The numbers above describe "admixture" And] what exactly is admixture?

I asked a few prominent geneticists to define it for this article. Dr. George Church, a professor at the Harvard Medical School and a pioneer in the mapping of the human genome, defines it this way: 

"Genetic admixture is the breeding between two or more previously isolated populations." 

[The second  thing] these findings show that the common claim that many African Americans make about their high percentage of Native American ancestry is a myth. Joanna Mountain broke down to me our low amounts of Native American ancestry in this way: "Eighty percent of African Americans have  less than 1 percent Native American ancestry. 

* * * * *

You can't throw a stick in a room full of black people hit somebody that does NOT claim to have a Cherokee or two in their blood line. So that last quote is surprising.

But I have a theory.

I think it was easier for black slave women to say to their light-skinned children, "Your Daddy was an Native American that was killed" than it was to say "Your Daddy is a white rapist that lives in the big house and will kill you or sell you if you say it out loud to anybody, ever." How is small child supposed to remember not to say anything. And "Who is my Daddy" is not a question that goes away.  I think a bunch of us were lied to about Great Great Aunt Sophie that was a full Cherokee with hair length down to the back of her knees. 

Read More

http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.html?wpisrc=root_lightbox 


****************************************

TRAYVON MARTIN VERDICT Anniversary

"Several years ago, as I was leaving for a dawn run (still dark outside), I was followed by a young man.  

I walked, he walked; I ran, he ran; I ran faster, he ran faster. 

When there was no doubt he was chasing me, I stopped and asked him what he wanted. He simply beckoned to me, saying, "Come here, come here." 

I responded, "YOU need to get away from me," as I assumed my fighting stance: feet apart, keys between fingers.

He stood there for a few moments and then began slowly backing away; he finally turned and ran back in the direction from which he'd come. 

Had he continued toward me and got within striking distance, this was my plan: stab him in the eyes with the keys and immediately kick him in his "man parts," and if that worked, beat his head into the concrete until he was unconscious or someone pulled me off of him. 

Yes, I would have struck first as a total stranger was pursuing me in the dark for apparently no good reason."

~ Gloria’s Story

**********************************
Seems like Gloria had a logical reaction to me. Even if there had been no dialogue between her and her stalker, and Gloria had wound up having to turn around and kick him in his assets, it STILL seems like a logical reaction. And I think it might seem like that way to 95% of the population, if they read her story too...for so long as race remained out of the picture. 

Now this might not be right, but it is mostly certainly true that the image George Zimmerman presented on the night he killed Trayvon Martin looks very similar to the image presented on television and in movies, over and over again, as the thief, the rapist, and the murderer. On THAT night George Zimmerman looked very much like 1,001+ actors who have landed the role of Hispanic Thug on shows presented on FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO, FOX AGAIN and a motion picture near you. 

If this same man, as pictured above, had been the one going home after getting skittles and tea, and then someone who could be cast as Mike Brady had done the killing, the very same people who support Zimmerman NOW would be JUST as unable to see past his Hispanic stereotype and acknowledge him as a victim. 

That's just as galling as it is ironic. And don’t you wonder what kind of book Zimmerman's father would have written then? 

In either case, Zimmerman as real chaser or as fictional chase-ee, I'm trying to imagine the conditions in which a logical person could perceive the chaser as the one whose fright counts most in a confrontational “misunderstanding” where someone ends up dead ... without some bone-marrow deep racism being involved. 

There’s no doubt, racially speaking, that things have improved in this country. We have a black president and at least 1/3 of the white population voted for him. This was unthinkable just 20 years ago, and maybe even 8 years ago. And despite the wishful thinking of covert and overt racists all over the United States, the Trayvon Martin case is NOT even close to being divided straight down racial lines. Things are not exactly like they were during the Rodney King trials. Thank God. 

Even so, George Zimmerman's personal store of racism is a drop in the bucket as compared to the amount of racism it took to support a murderer's right to kill Trayvon Martin this year.

The people that water, shine light on, and fertilize the Zimmermans of this country do more than enable racism. They have turned all these Zimmermans, these cowardly weasels with guns, into the unstable weapons of mass destruction that they are, taken all together. And the passing of these “Stand Your Ground” type laws was the enabler's way of pushing THE BUTTON. But without seeing day-to-day hate in their own mirrors and racial epithets foaming out of their own mouths, the superiority remains. And that superiority sans much hate remains invisible to them…but not to the rest of us. 

More importantly, in this condition they will never recognize themselves as Zimmerman's accomplices. And those that tsk-tsk this first group of enablers/accomplices for some stray “politically incorrect word ” or two, will be perfectly comfortable in calling these people “friends." And they won’t recognize their own roles as secondary accomplices either. 

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”

— George Burns

The election of President Barack Obama is two steps forward. But more than half(?) the country being unable to recognize Trayvon Martin, a man-child of 17, as a human-being frightened of a stranger following him in the dark, frightened enough to stand HIS GROUND and fight back just like Gloria would have - in Klan Country no less - is likely three steps back.* 

If Mamie Till were still alive to see all this, I wonder if we would be able to stand hearing her tell us why the accomplices said her son deserved to die. I wonder if she would be able to tell us how to make these accomplices take responsibility for what they’ve created --- and how she lived with it when many of the accomplices of her time never took responsibility for a thing. I wonder if she would be able to tell us all how to move forward again anyway.

*http://www.pbs.org/harrymoore/terror/k.html 

Originally written the day after the verdict.
#BlackLivesMatter Was Conceived By Alicia Garza,  Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi as a result of what happened to Trayvon Martin. And #BlackLivesMatter has turned a national spotlight on a number of cases, including Freddie Gray's. 

IT'S TIME FOR TARGET STORES TO GET OFF THE "GLEE" APPROACH TO DIVERSITY

AND THE GLEE APPROACH TO DIVERSITY CALLS FOR

E-RACE-SURE, STEREOTYPING or BOTH

TARGET GETS IT RACIALLY WRONG - AGAIN-

One of these things is not like the other ...in more ways than one
And four of these things look very much the same as they always do - polished and enhanced to the max

How is is possible to "randomly" choose four white models all near the "normal" standard of beauty size-wise then decide to make African American the plus sized model?

And not only did Target make the African American model the plus sized model, they went out of their way to choose a plus sized model that doesn't look like a model at all.

In other words, all the right junk is not in all the right places.

The African American model also looks to be half a head taller. And that head is positioned so as to make her look like she's some distance away from the group. And was she placed directly next to the bony thin white model to make her look --dare I say it-- as monstrous as possible? And what the hell is it with that defiant (almost standard angry) black woman expression on her face

Excuse me, but if I've seen one then I've seen 100 black, plus sized models dressed, posed, and photo-shopped better than the on in this target ad.

EXHIBIT A: Sports Illustrated Plus Sized Model

White thin models are always photo-shopped to perfection. In fact, I'm almost sure the model on the far left has had her thighs thinned down in the editing room. So why does the African American model have that bulges at the top of her inner thighs? Why haven't her bulges, cellulite, and skin tone been smoothed out like it has for this white plus sized model in Exhibit A?

Exhibit B 

As far as plus sized African American beauty goes, black men manage to post pictures of gorgeous plus-sized women daily (by white model standards) 

In fact Serena Williams is very, very likely a plus sized as big as her muscles are (this only requires one be a size 8 or 10 in the model universe alternate reality). But if a Serena Williams body is too hard to find, then a Serena body minus 15 to 20 pounds of muscle which is probably still plus sized AND sexy. 


Beyonce's body 15 to 20 pounds ago probably would fit into the plus sized model category for sure (at size 8 or size 10)

Exhibit C
Toccara Jones -  America's Top Model

The sexy plus sized body exists in real life plus sizes upwards of 16. But let me remind you again, even though I have zero photography experience, I can tell almost zero care was taken with the African American woman's image. Zero.  The body positive campaign that Dove was promoting, not so long ago, wasn't even going for that "sexy at every size look." Yet, most of the women involved in that campaign, widely ranging in size and age and physical fitness, were posed and presented better than this African American woman in the target ad.

More important than any of this: Why go the "Glee" route to diversity in the first place?

Why decide to stuff all the diversity in one non-white place....well away from white femininity? 

Why is it that white, large-and-in-charge have to have standard white female beauty scattered everywhere then put the diversity off to side all in a single location?

Actually, this Target ad is like "Glee" on steroids.

If Glee had had a single character that was black, female, plus sized, in a wheel chair, singing with a speech disorder - while having the other 20 members of the huge ensemble cast be the white, thin, empty-eyed and sold as "beautiful" as usual, that would be the "Glee" representation of this Target Store advertisement.

What is it about true diversity that the advertisement exec's at Target and the producers of "Glee" are having a hard time with? Why couldn't one of the four white models be the plus sized model? And why couldn't one of the four white women have been asian or latina?

I don't know how we can not take the ad at the top as someone's idea of a mean-spirited joke?

Exhibit D

Sometimes I think white advertising executives just go looking for that Aunt Jemima, motherly shape on automatic pilot because mammy stereotype is just so familiar and likable?

Exhibit: OFF THE CHARTS Bullsh**

By the way, this was not Target's first time out of the racial box.

Little Quvenzhane Wallis was playing "Annie' at the movies not long ago. And instead of putting up ads with the black actress up all over the store, as usual, to push an "Annie" clothing line or other "Annie" crap (lunch boxes, backpacks - I don't know) they used a little white girl. I don't recall seeing a little white actress replaced in this way...um...ever? Do you? 

Despite all the criticism, Target refused to apologize to Wallis for replacing her in ads with a white model (read more: http://urbanintellectuals.com/2014/12/31/target-will-not-apologize-to-quvenzhane-wallis-for-removing-her-from-in-store-ads/)

What all this means to me is this: The first place that Target needs to add some diversity is within their Executive Staff. And if their executive staff already has some diversity among those in charge of advertising, then the people they already have need to be replaced by new people with these things called backbones.

Apparently the Huffington Post could use a tich more diversity as well. They totally missed the boat on this. But commenters didn't. Read the original story here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/12/target-swimsuit-ad-body-positive_n_7571998.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

By the way, more than one person has suggested that this is what white people found so comforting about Oprah. Regardless of her business acumen, looks count on television. And Oprah's look was mammy familiar.