The Hermeneutics of Racial

Codes in Visual Representations

Presented by Layla Abdullah-Poulos

SUNY Empire State College Student Academic Conference

October 18, 2013

• Human expression has a profound ability to mold, shape and adjust cultural paradigms and individual worldviews.

• The results can vary both in interpretation as well as impact and depend upon the cultural lens of the viewer, reader, or listener.

• Examination of obtainable Anti-Obama graphics, through Hermeneutical and Race Theory lenses, demonstrates an attempt to politically exploit American cultural racial codes to connect with a portion of the country‘s demographic who relate the president‘s race with his inability to lead.

• Searching for graphics with President Barack Obama will result in many interpretive examples.

• Although the nuances of the messages differ, they are created by supporters and detractors alike, who desire to have their feelings about this political figure quickly and succinctly known.

• Among these graphics, there exist those which, if surveyed through hermeneutical and racial theory approaches, demonstrate the attempt to incite racial code words and symbols as a tactic to disqualify president Obama.

• – General Definition

• 1. the science of interpretation, especially of the Scriptures.

• 2. the branch of theology that deals with the principles of Biblical exegesis. (dictionary.com)

• – Specific Definition

• Smith and Riley ―Culture as Text: Narrative and Hermeneutics‖ • a methodology for the application

of hermeneutics beyond religious interpretation to include the processes of reader interpretation in other cultural texts and symbols

• Semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin―individual subjectivity and consciousness is made up of signs and meanings which are derived from our wider culture‖

• Author – Reader Relationship

• Author‘s Objective - to convey a message to the reader stemming from a cultural context• The author purposefully structures

an interpretive dialogue between the text and the reader; wherein, cultural background plays an active role in applying meaning to the said text and symbols encountered.

• Race theorists focus on race

as a, ―cultural object,

something constructed by

means of particular

narratives, symbols, and

cultural structures to

contribute meaning and

identity‖ (Smith and Riley

242)

When viewing anti-Obama graphics, the evocation of this

country‘s racial cultural narrative, through racially-charged

words that question the president‘s humanity, intelligence,

work ethic, and integrity is apparent.

Conquest Of The Planet

Of The Apes

(Thompson)

• These symbols invoke the long-nurtured American cultural association of African Americans with simians.

• ―In the 19th century and well into the 20th, popular media from movies to fiction to political cartoons frequently portrayed blacks as more simian than human‖ (Goff and Eberhardt para 5)‖.

• ―…white Americans unconsciously associate African Americans with apes. Newly published research suggests that connection remains stubbornly lodged in our psyches‖ (Jacobs).

Blacks are inhuman

Figure 1 (Unknown, Obama 2012) Figure 2 (Delonas)

Figure 3 (thesocietypages.org)

Figure 5 (themacchoi.blogspot.com -)Figure 4 (Aryanalternative3.gif)

• The imagery creates a sanction to view blacks as inhuman.

• It speaks to a deep-seeded conception that exists in the psyche of people from diverse backgrounds (racist as well as nonracist).

• This notion is indoctrinated at some level into every American‘s racial-cultural narrative.

• Authors of these texts wish to incite a monoglossic reading – an interpretation within the confines of the socio-cultural hegemony fashioned at a time when the United States was less egalitarian.

Hermeneutics which involves a dominant group affixing meaning and crafting a, ―unitary language and interpretation‖ (Smith and Riley 189).

Figure 7 (keepamericafree.om)

Figure 8 (biseor.wordpress.com )

Figure 6 (George Thatcher’s Greatest Minstrels)

• Authors purposefully elect words to craft a culturally-contextualized perception in the reader‘s mind.

• Semiotician Umberto Eco • model reader

• The reader who conforms to the “correct” interpretation

• closed text• ―…aim[s] at arousing a precise

response on the part of more or less precise empirical readers…[and] pulling a reader along a predetermined path‖ (Eco qtd. in Smith and Riley 190).

Authors enforcing a

specific meaning

―Although such text can be read in diverse ways and offer possibilities for infinite

semiosis, the codes within them generally work to close off alternative

interpretation‖ (Smith and Riley 190).

• Pun on the word Nigger

• Criminality of Black Men• correlates an Obama

second term to a prison term of a criminal

• Naturally Maladroit• Editor of the Harvard

Law Review,

• Harvard alum,

• a United States Senator,

• author of two autobiographies

James Watson-2007

"All our social policies are based

on the fact that their intelligence is

the same as ours - whereas all the

testing says not really‖

(as qtd. In Milmo).

Figure 9 (stickers)

Figure 10 (antiobama)

Figure 12 (forum.prisonplanet.com)

Figure 14 (Megatudes)

Figure 11 (monkeytricksinsa)

Figure 13 (The Most Racist Cartoon Ever)

• Shiftless, Listless, and Poor

• Diminished Work Ethic

• Aversion to poverty program because, ―…the

enduring ideology of the ―undeserving poor‖

and that, ―poverty in this country wears a

black face…‖ (Louis Gates Jr. and West 29)

Figure 15 (LiveVoltage)

Figure 16 (How to Collect Welfare)

Figure 19 (FirstPrinciples)

Figure 18 (Black People Collect Welfare Checks)

The monoglossic relationship between the president and the terms ‗welfare‘ and ‗food stamps‘ is

developed not as a matter of his policy but his race and seeks to maintain the stereotypical

status quo.

• stigmatize blacks as indolent and

parasitical

• infers that whites are the opposite

• as a black man, the president must

advocate redistributing the money of

hard-working whites to freeloading

blacks

Figure 17 (Service for Welfare)

• Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Out National Identity by Dr. Ian Reifowitz• ―African Americans absorb

negative stereotypes about black people and black culture from the larger society…‖ (51)• White is right

• Black is wrong

• These sentiments are also sent to other nonwhite groups.

• The indoctrination of whites into the American racial dialogue makes it difficult for some of them to accept anything but the status quo of white privilege and racial dominance.

The Consistent

American Race

Dialogue

• Privilege and Status• ―…means by which society

allocates privilege and status…‖ (Delgado and Stefancic 21).

• For whites fully indoctrinated in this assumption, Obama will never be bona-fide Commander and Chief because he is not white.

THAT IS MIGHTY WHITE OF

YOU!

―Put the White Back in the White House‖

demonstrates Eco‘s closed text approach,

and restricts any interpretations to only the

most obvious- the exclusivity of the white

house and the nation‘s leadership to the

white race.

By using the ethnic derogative ―spook‖

to reference the president, the

opportunity for alternate conclusion is

stunted and is becomes exclusively

about the preservation of White

Privilege.

Figure 20 (Getty Images)

Figure 21 (Unknown, Nobama)

• The environment, through engaging the senses

(sight, hearing, scent, feeling), directly affects the

mind.

• Of the human faculties, sight is clearly profound

in stimulating an individual‘s instinctual and

reflective thoughts, desires and consequently,

one‘s worldview.

• ―It is seeing which establishes our place in the

surrounding world…‖ (Berger 7).

• Whether positively or negatively, images pass

through the eyes, arouse the mind, and

potentially stoke various critical as well as

emotional responses in the viewer.

• Popular culture establishes a platform for the use

of graphics to make social and political assertions

as well as the opportunity to connect to the

reader in order to agitate a reaction.

• The anti-Obama imagery in American popular

culture reveals the use of words and visuals to

degrade the president through for those who

inhibited by racism.

Figure 22 (A New America)

• The Huffington Post. Getty Images. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.

• keepamericafree.com. Web.

• A New America. Aristocratic Journalism. Web. 1 September 2013. <http://www.aristocraticjournalism.com/a-new-america/>.

• antiobama. Commander and Thief. zazzle.com. web. 5 Nov. 2012.

• Aryanalternative3.gif. archive.adl.org . Web.

• Barack Obama | Biseor's Madness. biseor.wordpress.com .

• Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books, 1973. Pring.

• Black People Collect Welfare Checks. www.quickmeme.com.

• Blacks Look Like Apes Because They Have Ape DNA. themacchoi.blogspot.com -. Web.

• Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Dir. J. Lee Thompson. Perf. Roddy McDowal. 1972. Film.

• Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print.

• Cultural Criticism & Transformation. Dir. Sut Jhally. Perf. Bell Hooks. Media Education Foundation, 1997. Web. 29 November 2012.

• Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Print.

• Delonas, Sean. The Huffington Post. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.

• FirstPrinciples. Food Stamp Nation. zazzle.com. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

• George Thatcher's Greatest Minstrels . zazzle.com. web.

• Goff, Phillip Atiba and Jennifer L. Eberhardt. "Race and The Ape Image." 28 Feb. 2009. Los Angeles Times. Web. 30 Nov. 2012.

• How to Collect Welfare. www.memecenter.com.

• Jacobs, Tom. "Study Confirms Unconscious Linking of Blacks with Apes." 12 July 2010. Pacific Standard. Web. 5 September 2013. <psmag.com>.

• LiveVoltage. obama wants you. zazzle.com. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

• Louis Gates Jr., Henry and Cornel West. The Future of The Race. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. Print.

• Megatudes. Ineptocracy. zazzle.com. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

• Milmo, Cahal. "Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners." 17 October 2007. The Independent. Web. 7 September 2013. <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fury-at-dna-pioneers-theory-africans-are-less-intelligent-than-westerners-394898.html>.

• Oliver, Mary Beth and Dana Fonash. "Race and Crime in the News: Whites' Identification and Misidentification of Violent and Nonviolent Criminal Suspects." MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY 4 (2002): 137-156. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.

• Reifowitz, Ian. Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Out National Identity. Potomac Books Inc., 2012. Print.

• —. "Racism and Obama: The dog that didn't bark (twice)." Daily News Thursday January 2013. Web.

• Service for Welfare. breakingblacknews.com.

• Smith, Philip and Alexander Riley. Cultural Theory: An Introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print.

• Stickers, Stumpy's. Don't Re-Nig in 2012. ABC News. 1 Nov. 2012.

• The Most Racist Cartoon Ever. PropeGanderSaul. Web. 5 September 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7xbJ11EyOg>.

• Unknown. Nobama. Politics Nation. msnbc.com. 2012. Web. 1 Nov. 2012. <http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/10/26/billboard-in-georgia-compares-obama-to-hitler/>.

• Unknown. Obama 2012. anorak.co.uk. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.

• White, Blacks, and Apes, in the Great Chain of Being. The Society Pages. Web. <http://thesocietypages.org/>.