{"id":6193,"date":"2015-11-10T22:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T03:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=6193"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:49:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:49:29","slug":"the-missing-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=6193","title":{"rendered":"The missing family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catalogs that come to my mailbox usually\u00a0get dumped straight into the recycling bin, but today I took a cruise through Shutterfly’s.<\/p>\n

There was something strange about the catalog, though. It took me awhile to figure out what it was. And then I realized: It’s not what it is.<\/p>\n

It’s what it isn’t.<\/p>\n

A 24-page catalog, and\u00a0a 16-page gift guide insert, that apparently isn’t meant for black folks.<\/p>\n

You will look long and hard to find any black skin in all of those photos on all those pages. I finally found one, a small black child in a tiny\u00a0photo of a biracial grouping.<\/p>\n

There were a few people in the catalog who were vaguely Asian, and some people who might be biracial or maybe just have a good tan. But dark black skin was nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n

Maybe you’ll say this is a small thing, compared to the police brutality and racial slayings that are still happening in America.<\/p>\n

But it isn’t, to me. Images are powerful. Shutterfly’s catalog is all about family at the holidays.<\/p>\n

How is it possible, with all the people who must have worked to produce that catalog, that none of them chose a photo of an African-American family?<\/p>\n

I know, I shouldn’t be surprised. This year alone has been rife with examples of\u00a0misuse<\/a> and absence<\/a> of black images. Not to mention Google’s identification of black faces as “gorillas.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Although black men – entertainers and world leaders – showed up on U.S.\u00a0magazine covers as early as 1930 (Time<\/em>), mainstream magazines have been extremely slow <\/a>to feature black female models.<\/p>\n

\"1968\"<\/a>
1968<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GQ<\/em> waited until 1996 to feature a black woman\u00a0on the cover, and\u00a0Vanity Fair<\/em> and Cosmopolitan<\/em> have had just a few in the past two decades.<\/p>\n

Shutterfly, though?\u00a0What, do they think African-Americans don’t like to take photos and show them off and make gifts for their friends?<\/p>\n

Maybe the Shutterfly staff is just dreaming of a white Christmas.<\/p>\n

And their\u00a0catalog is now in my\u00a0recycling bin.<\/p>\n

Day 127’s penny is a 1974, the year of\u00a0the first American Vogue<\/em> issue to feature a black woman on the cover.<\/p>\n

\"Day<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catalogs that come to my mailbox usually\u00a0get dumped straight into the recycling bin, but today I took a cruise through Shutterfly’s. There was something strange about the catalog, though. It took me awhile to figure out what it was. And then I realized: It’s not what it is. It’s what it isn’t. A 24-page catalog, … read more The missing family<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[193,465,204,156,464],"class_list":["post-6193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-193","tag-magazines","tag-media","tag-photography","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6198,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions\/6198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}