much older

[olamina]

Going through a stack of my old magazines, I came across this gem of a political cartoon from the October 1971 issue of Playboy.

Comments

[benicek]

Hehe. It's true, he'd be ancient.

[bikerbar]

I've always found those old playboys fascinating .. the combination of liberal politics with erotic objectification. This cartoon comes out of that whole dialogue promoted by the Panthers, the awareness of issues raised by MLK and of course his tragic assassination which continues to reverberate today. As a culture we were reaching for something good then, yet it was also a crazy time, John and Yoko mishmashed all the issues together with their "Woman is the nigger of the world

[olamina]

"Ultimately I think we need to become colorblind, to see the person, not the color, which is only a surface issue, in a sense."

Ultimately I think that the colors (and facial features and hair textures and clothes and all) needs to stop signifying whatever twisted things they signify. As I'm sure you well know from your training in the arts there is nothing intrinsically good or bad with any color in the palette, we human beings and our symbol systems have made them so.

[bikerbar]

very well put. And sure its not so much about being colorblind as it is about celebrating difference. Like you said, reclaim the colors of the palette.

You might like the paintings of Bob Thompson where the people are all types of colors and everyone feels fine

[olamina]

i don't even need a celebration frankly. i think it is about not placing more weight on one difference than another. i mean there is no feeling of unity amongst people with brown hair necessarily and frankly i don't feel any need to give a freckled person or a person with a limp a high five. I am very much in a "End Racism So People Can Be Left Alone" camp rather than the multicultural potluck/drum circle scene.