sheeeet I didn’t think it could have lived in a more ignorant suburb during my teenage years in the 90’s but “The East High Orientals” sign up in 2009 at Rochester beats Oakmont High School. Orientals - Indians - Redskins - all part of the same history of racist america that we have yet to rid - fight LUMBADA MUBATA ZAPOWATTA!

Have you watched Jonathan Jarvis’s 11min animation of the sub-prime mortage crisis? It provides a great explanation of the whole situation. Well you must read MrAlarm’s “Depicting the ‘Sub-Prime’ Household” on the blog, History Slideshow.

MrAlarm’s blog post points out that Jarvis’s image choice of the bad sub-prime family is racist - typical arguments that we have seen of welfare families being immoral, wasteful baby factories.  In the image of the perfect prime mortgage family  - the couple has one child, one dog and both people are thin and dressed in crisp lines - in comparison to the “dirty” family below.

I agree with Mrarlarm’s observations - and for those who say that we are reading too much into it - I would like to counter that and say that media creators make decisions about how to characterize his figures - Jarvis characterizes the investors as overweight professionals in suits where their fat is about to burst out  - underscoring the sentiment that these investors were greedy, overweight, ugly people.

Well below is an excerpt of MrAlarm’s post and Jarvis’s well made 11 min animation:

“I’m fascinated with Jarvis’ depiction of the sub-prime household, mostly because it lays bare the assumptions pretty much everyone is making, but rarely stating, about who these people really are. I don’t want to overextend myself here, but my reading of this image is that that sub-prime family exhibits many of the characteristics that have been historically attributed in the popular imagination to poor, black households: irresponsible behavior (drinking, smoking), obesity, out-of-control fertility… Do what you will with the presence of a tattoo on the man and poofy hair on the woman (both missing in the depiction of the prime household), or the fact that this family doesn’t even have a dog. The point is that the sub-prime household is depicted not simply as poor, but also as immoral.

I think the racialization of the “immoral, sub-prime household” in this depiction and others deserves more discussion. The stench of immorality associated with the financial crisis has elicited a lot of rage over the past six-eight months. Most of this rage has been directed at “greedy” lenders and traders, but the undercurrent of contempt for “sub-prime” households cannot be ignored.

What’s missing for me in discussions of the economic crisis is a historical approach that takes into account changing constructions of race, poverty, family, and home ownership in the United States. I agree that it is vital for the general public to understand the workings of our financial system, but that understanding will be incomplete if it doesn’t connect economic processes to the cultural and social forces that have shaped them.

If anyone has encountered this kind of analysis in popular sources, I’d love to read them - links are welcome in the comments section.”