Blue-eyed Mexicans need not apply

For publishers in the elementary ed biz, diversity is the rule of the day, and diversity is all about stereotyping, isn't it?  So what happens when your stock photos don't look stereotypical enough? Like, you have excessively pale Mexicans or something equally undesirable. You find some Asians that LOOK Mexican. D'oh. As Jeff Jacoby reports:

The cofounder of PhotoEdit Inc., a commercial archive that specializes in pictures of what it calls ``ethnic and minority people in all walks of life," advises publishers that images of Chicanos can be passed off as American Indians from the Southwest, because they "look very similar." Similarly, [Daniel Golden of the Wall Street Journal] notes, a textbook photographer tells clients that since the "facial features" of some Asians resemble Indians from Mexico, "there are some times where you can flip-flop."

Similarly, if your disabled kids don't look too spiffy:

Well, you can always do what Houghton Mifflin does. The well-known textbook publisher keeps a wheelchair on hand as a prop and hires able-bodied children from a modeling agency to pose in it. It keeps colorful pairs of crutches on hand, too -- in case a child model turns out to be the wrong size for the wheelchair.

Fabulous article. Read the whole thing. H/t Wretchard

Comments

[Rob B.]

When you shoot food photos you use watered down paste for milk because it's whiter and use glycerine for water droplets in pop can photography because it beads up better and stay in place on the can.

Advertising Photography there is a fine art to making food "look" good despite the fact you have to make it unedible to do that. I'm not suprised to find the stock photo people doing that either.

[Rob B.]

http://www.nps.gov/archive/gett/getttour/tstops/tstd2-11ss.htm

They've been doing it for ages.

[octavio garate]

YEAH ITS ANNOYING HOW UNCULTEURED PEOPLE DONT UNDERSTAND THAT MEXICAN PEOPLE ALSO HAVE BLOND HAIR AND BLUE EYES AND EVERYWHERE IN BETWWEN ,,,WER A CULTURE OF DIVERSE BACKGROUNDS,,,,

[gail]

Uncultured is exactly the word for it, Octavio.