National Geographic and Why Racism Sucks
First written on June 10, 2014 by Nicole Young
Today, I intended to post something introspective about loss and life, not about racism. That was until about 5pm, when I went on Instagram and saw the National Geographic feed.
I’m a nerd and I follow Nat Geo. If you haven’t started following them on Instagram, you definitely should. Their feed is a beautiful medley of nature photos and homages to human life. It includes pictures of all things beautiful on this planet: polar bears, barren mountain landscapes, and people going about their lives. Today, among many of the pictures they posted, was a striking image of a black couple in New York City on the train home.
The two are looking away from the camera and the caption reads, “A young couple ride the #6train on a hot afternoon. He is from the Bronx and she is from NJ.” Simple and lovely; a tribute to New York and to America, on a feed that more often features slices of life from other countries. So now you’re wondering, what’s the big deal? This all sounds harmless enough, right?
The problem, my friends, came in the comments section on this particular photo. Instead of the usual oohs and aahs that Nat Geo pictures (both of the animal and human variety) receive, the comments on this particular photo are fiercely critical. And that is my most diplomatic characterization. The negative commentary ranges from outrage to disgust. People cannot seem to understand why Nat Geo would think that this photo or more accurately, this couple would be worthy of their feed. If the comments were only about the quality of the photo, I think I could understand them a little more. However, it’s clear that something else is at work.
As one commenter astutely observes, “Wow, I’ve never seen so many negative comments on @natgeo post. It would take a pic of a black couple on a train in NYC to bring out the ignorance in people…” And that’s the problem. When Nat Geo posts pictures of Black people from tribes throughout the continent of Africa, they are distant enough to be seen as artistic. The third world through a white gaze is palatable and could even be described as beautiful. However, asking people to see a Black couple, who takes the train just like them, as beautiful, seems to be to unfathomable.
I read the comments and my heart broke a little bit. I’ve seen Nat Geo pictures in the past few weeks of white people going about their lives in Missouri or Montana. Their images netted 91,000 and 200,000 likes respectively and slew of effusive praise. And yet a Black American couple does not seem to warrant the same response.
In moments like this (and they are frequent) I am forced to remember times in my life when Black beauty has been called into question, simply on the basis of it’s Blackness. There was the time in college when a White girl said of my best friend, meaning it as a compliment, “She’s pretty for a Black girl.” Every single time I’ve heard someone say, “She’s pretty/He’s handsome, but s/he’s so dark” about this person or another. The plethora of TV shows, movies, commercials, and ads which tell me and people that look like me that our hair and skin are ugly.
All of these things contribute to moments like this, when my heart aches because in a country where people so fiercely deny their racism and implicit bias, it is clear that underneath it all, the negativity and anger isn’t about a bad photo, it’s about the Black subjects.
