The Persistence of White Supremacist Heteropatriarchy in “Outdoor Life Magazine” 2007
While on the plane to North Carolina, there was a man sitting next to me, reading the magazine Outdoor Life. The magazine had nothing but images of white men trying to hunt and kill non-human animals. There were pages dedicated to the best "weapons" the seek out "game" and end its life.
I felt compelled to buy the magazine because of what I saw on one of the pages. There was an article about "Squirrels Gone Wild". As you can see below, the cartoon of a "squirrel gone wild" resembles-- to me--- (and remember, I am the Critical Race Theorist, Black Feminist Theorist, and Critical Whiteness Studies researcher, so my take could be "biased") that of a "gang banger"... and I assume that the author's perception of a being “gone wild” is probably not a "white gang banger" but probably a black or Latino male gangsta. The picture says it all and I'm just amazed and lost for words right now.
The magazine's connotation of whiteness, power, heteropatriarchy is stunning. Except for one or two women on the pages, it appears to be the domain of all white males.
The reasons the author lists that "squirrels have gone wild" are also sickening; he speaks of squirrels attacking humans. Humans are depicted as "innocent"-- that their encroachment on non-human animals and their over-consumption of land resources that displaces non-human animals is not even referenced. Instead, we are led to believe that squirrel's behaviors are innately "evil" as they attack “innocent” (probably white) families who are just "minding their own businesses."
... didn't we hear about this in other contexts with human beings during colonialism and now neo-colonialism? The savage Native American who "invades" the colonizer's home, ready to kill the colonizer (being male) and rape and kill his wife? Don't we hear that now when indigenous people, displaced by present day neo-colonialism, are "insurgent animals", attacking innocent people who have had "nothing" to do with making the "insurgents" violent and angry?
WHY THE HELL IN 2007, IS THIS CARTOON ALLOWED, WHEN THE UNDERLYING MESSAGE IS BOTH SPECIESIST AND RACIST? Is the implication that black and Latino men involved in thug and gangsta life (or maybe if they aren't even involved in gangsta life, but by default “gone wild” because they are black and Latino in a white culture that constructs them as deviant “at birth) are "animals"? Is this why, when the cartoonist decided to illustrate a "humanoid" version of a squirrel "gone bad", he can only think of his perception of the deviant as a black or Latino male that could also invade the white family's reality and attack them?
Am I looking too much into this? See pict below.
Outdoor Life October 2007 page 18, by Buzz Bud.
Squirrels [and Black Men] “Gone Wild”
Sunday, October 14, 2007
