Channing Kennedy

Stumped by NRO’s Sotomayor Cover? Try Being More Racist.

By now you’ve seen this hum-dinger of a cover that the National Review thought was a good idea (or maybe a so-bad-it’s-good idea, judging by their ready-to-go defense of it). Neil Sinhababu of Donkeylicious does an admirable job of putting himself in the magazine’s shoes and, erm, enlightens the rest of us. Is it a case of all brown people looking alike? Neil says:

Something like that is certainly in there, but the way I see the joke actually depends on incongruities between the stereotypes of the nonwhite ethnicities involved. The Buddha-like pose and Asian features are tied to lofty pretensions of sagelike wisdom. And what sort of person is it who’s pretending to be some kind of sage? A Hispanic woman! As if.

The in-joke in this cover is for people who have already internalized a stereotype of Hispanic women as hotheaded and not that bright. Put one of them in the Buddha suit, and if you’ve absorbed the right racist stereotypes, the incongruity is hilarious.

Posted at 10:04 AM, Jun 08, 2009 in Permalink | View Comments