Atlanta Weather Girl “Subliminal Racism” ??
Ella Dorsey, former model, now evening news meteorologist for CBS 46 in Atlanta compared African park rangers’ posture and facial expressions to the gorillas they guard in the Congo.
From her bio:
A young girl fell in love with the weather at the age of four and turned her interest into a career as a meteorologist. After her father gave her a Discovery Channel VCR titled Tornado, Hurricane, Flood, Ella Dorsey was immediately enamored with the subject of weather. She now uses her forecasts to communicate her enthusiasm in the issue.
Ella Dorsey, an American journalist and meteorologist, is presently a meteorologist for WGCL-TV in Atlanta, which is owned by CBS. Aside from that, she is a happy unmarried single woman. In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at Ella Dorsey’s wiki and biography.
During a segment discussing the now viral photo, Dorsey remarked: “Isn’t it amazing? You can see the similarities between you and them.”
According to Yahoo News, reaction from Atlanta viewers was not positive:
One viewer, Maya Teague, who witnessed the moment live, wrote on Twitter, “WOW! You notice the similarities between an African man and a gorilla? Focus on the weather, Sunshine.” Teague then tagged the show’s anchor Gables, who is a woman of color, adding, “Please educate your coworkers on subliminal #racism.”
“I meant similarities [to] posture…”
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 25, Dorsey (Follow on Twitter), felt regret for what some saw as on-air gaffe:
“I meant similarities[sic] in Thomas’s posture and the gorilla. I never meant between the man and the gorilla. Sorry if I offended you! Thank you for watching.”
H/t – friend of Subspecieist.com Pale Primate at Twitter.
There is some evidence to back up the notion of subliminal racism, or what might be better described as race realism.
From a 2009 study,
Subliminal exposure to faces and racial attitudes: Exposure to Whites makes Whites like Blacks less
Despite recent social and political advances, most interracial contact is still superficial in nature, and White individuals interact mainly with other Whites. Based on recent mere exposure research, we propose that repeated exposure to Whites may actually increase prejudice. In a series of experiments, White participants were subliminally exposed to White faces or nothing (control) and then completed various explicit and implicit measures of racial attitudes.
Exposure to White faces consistently led to more prejudice by making attitudes toward Blacks more negative, rather than by making attitudes toward Whites more positive. A final experiment demonstrated that the pattern of increased prejudice following exposure to Whites was moderated by the strength of participants’ attitudes toward Whites. Only when White attitudes were strong did Black attitudes became more negative after exposure to White faces.
Even Ivory Soap has been accused of sending subliminal messages for white purity.
Another study from the early 2000s, Anna Bloomfield,
Exploring the History of Subliminal Racism in Ivory Soap Commercials
A 1959 Ivory soap commercial features a white upper-class attractive young woman
displaying Ivory soap as an economical and luxurious choice, while sending overt racist messages about whiteness. The commercial begins with a young white woman in a fancy parlor turning to the camera and telling the audience that she has a split personality between her pleasure-loving side and her practical side.
However, she explains that both sides get along just fine when it comes to Ivory soap. She then exclaims, “It’s so white, looks pure, smells pure” (Procter & Gamble “Ivory Soap Commercial-1959-Vintage Advertising”). Here she alludes back to the belief that whiteness is a state of purity because she openly states that because the bar of soap is so white that it looks pure.
The woman is dressed in a flowing white gown for her pleasure-loving side, and a lightly colored suit for her practical side. The woman is surrounded by the color white throughout the commercial. For example, when she shows us how luxurious the soap is in the bath, it cuts to her in an elegant all white bathroom, gleefully washing herself with Ivory using a white washcloth in her bathtub (Procter & Gamble “Ivory Soap Commercial 1959-Vintage Advertising”). Everything from the flowers on the table behind her to the bow in her hair is white. Lisa Lebduska, an English Professor at Wheaton College, explains, “Ivory’s white purity…
Was Dorsey just following a natural instinct favoring similar traits in morphology and skin tone?
This seems rather facetious…in my opinion…