Today I did an important thing, but I don't know if anyone noticed.

[cheesley1230]

We are going to start figure painting in painting class this week, which I am really excited about. One thing I have been thinking about though is that I have never drawn someone who isn't white. I had been thinking of asking Mark whether all of the models we are going to have are white, but had sort of forgoten about it for awhile

Comments

[peaceofpie]

My guess is that he and the class are so accustomed to hearing the word "flesh" used that way that it doesn't occur to them that it's a racist use of the word. To me that says that the prevalence of the word being used that way is so normalized that even calling it out subtlely as you did doesn't cause people to make the connection of "hey, not everyone's flesh IS that color". I wish I could even say for sure that I would have noticed it myself, but to tell the truth, there's a possibility I would have been sitting there ignorantly too. (And major kudos to you for posting about it, because I can tell you for sure that whether or not I would have noticed it had I been in your class, it's not something that will EVER slip by me again...so, that's one person's outlook you've changed for sure

[cheesley1230]

Thanks for your suggestions. I don't know if I will talk to him about it. But since I also have a problem with him assuming we only want to know how to paint white people and then telling us we are learning how to paint people in general. I definately plan to keep challenging this, first of all by not painting a white person for this assignment.