Don't Do This!

Curtis N wrote in post #4432476
In group shots you can arrange people by gender, you can arrange them by height, you can arrange them by age, but you can't arrange them by skin tone.

Obviously you can
But this is really something, I wouldn't even think about. And after crappy day, this thread made me laugh.

gjl711 wrote in post #4438176
Is there some racial thing I am just plainly missing?

Apparently so.

Segregation vs. integration. The whole "separate but equal" garbage vs. the current social, politically correct goal of racial diversity.

To separate people by race symbolizes some concepts that much of the world has been trying to rise above for some time now. I know little of the history on the east side of the Atlantic, but in the US the idea of racial integration has been met with sometimes violent opposition in the last 50 years. So it's a fairly sensitive subject.

In this case I doubt the photographer was a racist. He was just an idiot.

On both sides of the Atlantic there has historically been a "light is good, dark is bad" mentality. Nonsence, of course, but so is much of social classification.

Even among an essentially homogenous people, lighter skin was historically perceived as better. Mostly because a darker skin meant more exposure to the sun, which implied manual labor, which implied serfdom. Bluebloods, after all, had very pale skin.

With the advent of more modern mores, an interesting switch took place. A darker, tanned skin became preferable because such a skin implied more leisure time, hence greater wealth. But this was true only if the untanned parts were very light in color, and located in the proper places. For example, a tanned back was good, unless you had pale legs, in which case it was very bad, because it implied you were the lowest sort of manual laborer (a shirtless navvy).

Strange, very strange...in this PC world this stuff seems to happen more and more when someone tries to pick a fight with everything and everyone. Had to of been some kid who knew he was doing it by skin tone and went home "mommy, they put all the dark/light skin on one side..." and it was blown out of the water. I see it in schools all the time, parents tend to do it over every little friggen thing. In this case the photog was dumb for not realizing what he was doing, thinking to much of the technical side and not the human element - ah well.

people are so sensitive these days. Dang it bugs me. At what point did our society become such wussies

gjl711 wrote in post #4438176
Ya know, I have been thinking about this since yesterday and am coming up short. Where exactly did he screw up? What toes were stepped on? Is there some racial thing I am just plainly missing? Is being on the one end of the color spectrum perceived as bad and being on the other as good? And if so, which is the bad end, left or right? Is it that he noticed that people have different skin color in the first place? Is the alignment somehow assigning negative attributes to someone or positive ones to others?

I’m like Izak, I would love to see the pic and think it may be a powerful one as it clearly should show the range of skin tone in this one school. But other than shading, where is the negative aspect of the alignment?

I'm with you 100 percent on this one.

I think the reactions are what cause the problem - the over-sensitive politically correct reactions.

Could it be that people that over-react this way are the ones that consider skin colour differences important? Is it possible that they are the root of the problem (or at least part of it)?

The various colorations of the human population aren't going away for at least a couple of years. Time to get accustomed to this and deal with it appropriately.

Curtis N wrote in post #4438495
Apparently so.

Segregation vs. integration. The whole "separate but equal" garbage vs. the current social, politically correct goal of racial diversity.....

But he didn’t segregate anyone. They were all still in the same group unless what he did is pick out a few folks and have them stand way off to the side clearly apart from the rest or identify a few and tell them they could not participate because they were the wrong color. It sounds as if he sorted, not segregated which is no different that if he would have put all the females to the left and males to the right. Would that have been sexist. Or all the tall people in the back and short people in the front. Is that discriminatory? It just sounds to me that if we use gender or height or any number of other sorting criteria were ok, but skin color is a no no.

I thought you could do just about anything as long as you called it art.

Like it would be cool to have the kids dress in bright colors and then sort them out according to the rainbow. No... wait... that would anger the gays... or would it anger the anti-gays?

gjl711 wrote in post #4439225
It just sounds to me that if we use gender or height or any number of other sorting criteria were ok, but skin color is a no no.

100% agree.
Why suddenly does matter because it was light skin, dark skin,
If it had girl, boy.... tall, short..

We would never have discussed how asinine it really is..... IMO

Mooler wrote in post #4439969
The whole overly politcally correct thing is getting out of hand

Its out of hand!

Curtis N wrote in post #4432476
In group shots you can arrange people by gender, you can arrange them by height, you can arrange them by age, but you can't arrange them by skin tone.

Cyth0n wrote in post #4434430
Maybe because of the historical context?

Because the PC police are in control...

And probably because some darker-skinned "white" claimed he was put with the "blacks," or vice versa.

How about we forget about the kids' natural skin tones and Photoshop everybody to 18% gray? Or a nice George Hamiton tan?

And we kidded briefly about height. In the real world there have been accusations of "my kid is discriminated against and always placed in the back." The fact that the kid was a foot taller than his classmates was irrelevant.

I'm with Mel Brooks who, thank God, hasn't got a politically correct bone in his body. When publicly called to task about "Blazing Saddles," he said, "You want nice? Go to a different movie!"

gjl711 wrote in post #4432355
Hmm… for color it’s insensitive but for height, nothing. I have been discriminated my whole life because I’m tall. Just once I wanted to sit in the front row. END ALL DESCRIMINATION NOW!!!

Well, I'm short, and that's even worse...we're the last ones to know it's raining, and the first to drown!!

Cubix Rube wrote in post #4441376
Well, I'm short, and that's even worse...we're the last ones to know it's raining, and the first to drown!!

That sucks.

Cubix Rube wrote in post #4441376
Well, I'm short, and that's even worse...we're the last ones to know it's raining, and the first to drown!!

Try suing for having the sidewalks built to close to your a$$
You could be rich