Race representation matters, from movies to just everyday depictions of life. It’s the very topic behind three photographs by Chris Buck which presented people of color in place of roles usually reserved for white people. Filipina-Chinese Judy Geralde promptly tweeted them out, showing how the photos were impactful for people in the minority.
The tweet went viral, with over 200,000 likes and 100,000 retweets, which meant that it resonated not just with Judy but with many others who felt the same way about how their race is presented. Our world is still heavily dominated by racism, blatant or otherwise.
Mic.com reached out to Judy and asked her opinions about her tweet, which introduced the photos from their spread in O Magazine to social media. Her answer reflected how “….these photos reflect the internal struggles she endured due to the lack of representation of Asian women, as well, as the ‘overbearing whiteness’ in her own childhood.” Judy then went on to describe how growing up she only had one Asian doll, a Mulan one, in fact and how it felt like most of the images she would see growing up already placed people of color in a certain class. Her tweet was greeted with similar reactions, proving that the problem is deeply rooted even in the most mundane things: the dolls we see at the store, the jobs available only to people of a particular status, etc.
Chris Buck thought of that when he presented the concept to the editors of O Magazine and to the publication’s founder Oprah Winfrey, “When you see an image from someone [of a different race], what is your expectation of them and are we challenging it? Why do we expect a certain thing from someone of a [certain race] and expect them to be serving another [race]?”
Think about it. The mere fact that these photos are causing quite a stir proves that we’ve got a long way to go in the fight for equality.
[Mic]
Photos by Chris Buck for O Magazine
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