"Negro Riding League"

This photo is of “Negro racing” as it was called back in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s in certain parts of the U.S. Thousands of people would get together every Friday night in fields all around and make wagers on their favorite team. It consisted of a half-mile track and included hurdles of various kinds, such as burning moats, fire-ant trenches and drunken snipers. The teams always had a Negro American as the racer, and a white midget as the jockey. It lasted for about twenty-five years before the over-regulation by the various state government’s got so burdensome, that the “Negro Racing League” (NRL) shut their doors.

In this photo it definitely follows the words that we orient ourselves so we can orient others. We orient the black children in this photo as the “typical” kids living in a poor impoverished village, probably living in shacks or little villas. Living in what seems to look like a very rural, pretty much run down area they possibly raise a small amount livestock, as that is what they live by. They look like the kids that we see on the commercials where the company running the commercial is asking you to sponsor a child. We orient ourselves with the white kids in the picture. The kids possibly their having a good time because mom’s or dad’s job got moved to this area, or they are on a mission trip, or visiting for whatever reason. This follows Dyer’s ways of thinking in the way that whites have souls and blacks do not, which also connects to his ways of viewing Christianity. Which whites oriented them selves to be to make slavery seem acceptable.

The political work going on is just creating what I feel is more stereotypes in our heads, but at the same times, it goes along with the view that whites are normal and average and regular, while black people or people of color are not. The cultural view is that there are the civilized and uncivilized here. The white kids are acting like jockeys, who in the world are typically well known, wealthy, shorter white people who make money by riding horses. In this case the uncivilized are the black kids who are being position as animals. They are the horses in this picture, wild animals trained to do what they are meant to do when they are meant to do and win. It also follows along with the Marx perspective that the only way value is produced is by labor. There are many views to talk to this picture, as Robin says, every image is an argument.