In OUR future, you wouldn’t look twice

Racial meanings are an interesting and fickle phenomenon. When they are circulated by common discourses and entrenched in a society, they become completely naturalised. They are seen as “common sense”, instantly recognised, part of the culture’s “language” and do not need explanation. The association of certain races with certain meanings becomes invisible and unquestioned, even amongst those who are concerned with the treatment and representation of races.

But when someone outside that society takes a peer inside, this system often exposes itself for what it truly is, a pervasive collection of arbitrary shorthands. That is exactly what I experienced a few years ago when I read about a controversial poster from South Africa.

The literal meaning of this poster is quite clear. There is an interracial couple. The slogan – “in OUR future, you wouldn’t look twice” – promises that whoever DASO are, they are committed to a racially tolerant society.

But what interested me wasn’t the poster itself, it was its reception in South Africa. It attracted wide controversy because it supposedly reinforced White male dominance. For example, Zet Luzipo, president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, said “The poster says, ‘Join the DA to have an affair with a white person’. It entrenches the white supremacy that we fought against during the liberation struggle. We will not be excited with having an affair with a white person; we will not be enticed by that.” (Cadet 2012)

White dominance? White supremacy?

I didn’t see it. I checked the poster again (ironic). I could see no text, framing, action, expression, gesture or stance that suggested the White man was dominant. Nor was the imagery marked with any stereotypes. They had nigh-identical poses and there was no other content except the slogan. We know nothing else about these people. I could not ask for a more neutral and equal representation. Literally just two people standing there. I became confused.

Was I just really oblivious? There was a national outcry and I was looking at the same image that everyone else was, so there must have been something to cause such an accusation. So I asked a group of people about it, some of whom were from, or had lived in, South Africa. “How is White male dominance depicted? The man is slightly taller? I’m confused. I don’t see it,” I said. Some Americans concurred; it was not just a matter of not sympathising with the concern, it was a matter of not understanding why it even exists.

The replies were quite enlightening for all. To those in that society, they could just point to the poster as if it was self-evident, and it would answer for itself. But they knew that I and others in the group were not familiar with South Africa, so they were forced to understand our viewpoint to understand our question. They had to look at the imagery objectively, devoid of any social meanings, as if from a robot or alien’s perspective. That’s when we managed to dissect assumptions and get to the heart of the interpretation.

The power relationship is seen as inherent to the situation depicted, regardless of how it is depicted. A toxic mix of racism and sexism meant that people saw what they were primed to see in the combination of a White male and a Black female. And they saw a lot. The male is the taker and the female is the taken. The marker of light skin is intrinsically representative of oppressive White groups, past and present, and the signifier of dark skin is intrinsically representative of oppressed Black groups, past and present. In all relationships between “different” people, one member is supposed to be in charge, because that’s just how things work. Together, these unspoken assumptions combined to form some sort of mental obligation to figure out which person is the dominant one in this visual pairing of sexes and races. They all came to the same conclusion without realising how much socially constructed meaning they had stacked on top of the original poster. The White male is seen as dominant because a White male image means dominance.

With the illogicity of the situation exposed, it became sadly clear just how entrenched racial meanings can become in a society. The people who protested about the poster did not realise they were re-circulating unspoken stereotypes of racial dominance in their interpretation, even as they condemned White supremacy and racism.

Someone then pondered how the poster could be adapted, so that it would still depict an interracial White male/Black female couple in some way, but would not accrue any implications of dominance in his society whatsoever. Nobody could think of a way.

The connotations of colour were inescapable.

Works cited

Cadet, Danielle. “Interracial Poster Sparks Controversy In SouthAfrica”. HuffPost Black Voices. The Huffington Post, Inc., 27 March 2012. Web. 25 March 2016.