What the Images We Choose Reveal
About Noon PST. Outside on the patio in a zero gravity chair (inspired by Amanda Andere).
I am in sun worship mode as I find it soothes my mind, heals my soul and nourishes my body.
I cannot tell if it is an intentional overcompensation for the invisibility and disposability of Blackness but now our likenesses are everywhere, even if we are not salient to the core message. This seems particularly true when talking about equity— particularly racial equity. Somewhere along the line, racial equity = Black.
And when we are represented, it often reflects a singular representation of what that means to be Black in regard to physical appearance, community context and often even attitude. This is part of the ignorance (willful and otherwise) of the US - a fixation with simplicity, and characterizations.
A more dubious analysis is that this is a deliberate conflation so as to continue to pit communities who have been marginalized within the white, capitalistic and patriarchal roots of this set of federated states against one another. Couple this with the refusal to center whiteness in a way in which the horror and trauma it reaps— on others as well as itself — remains hidden. It is a powerful and effective way to signal awareness and understanding of the dynamics at play without having to acknowledge the who/how in perpetuating and benefitting from them.
So next time you see graphical representations of Black people in a piece or are considering images for your own writings, look deeper. Ask yourself some questions:
How and in what ways does the image relate to the central theme of the content/topic?
In what ways does the visual reflect the multiplicities of the Black experience?
Who isn't being represented and in what ways does that absence create a false narrative?
This blog was written on April 2, 2021
Related Threads:
About The Author:
Jara Dean-Coffey (jdc) is Founder and Director of the Equitable Evaluation Initiative and the Founder of Luminare Group. For the past twenty-five years, she has partnered with clients and colleagues to elevate their collective understanding of the relationship between values, context, strategy and evaluation and shifting our practices so that they are more fully in service of equity. For more about musings + machinations click here.
