Report From the Bahamas is an excellent essay written by June Jordan about racial issues and insensitivity that she observed on vacation. Jordan begins the essay with a description one of the hotel's ads which displays a smiling Black man, fully dressed in a tux, standing in water up to his calves holding a drink tray. This image is disturbing to say the least. It portrays this man as being so eager to serve you and make you comfortable, that he will happily walk into the ocean in a tux just to serve you a frozen cocktail. She goes on to discuss the women in the marketplace who are haggled with by cheap western tourists. This all occurs on an Island where the poorest people leave their families in order to work at vacation resorts to wait on wealthy guests. These guests, who probably make more money in a week than these people will make all month, are the same people who will haggle for a lower price with a local market vendor.
There has obviously become some sort of disconnect between social consciousness in "normal life" and social consciousness on vacation. Most people would probably think nothing of the clearly racist advertisement while on vacation. However if a similar ad was presented here in the U.S, everyone would be fighting against it and bashing the company for lack of respect. The degradation of people based on race and gender is still very much alive. June Jordan's reading prove that realness and we can no longer let ourselves go on vacation from social consciousness.
Good points, Kaitlyn. Like you said, the picture of the man in the water is representative of the way oppression is just seen as normal in some contexts. I'm sure when people visit our country they see examples of this that we wouldn't even notice. Can anyone think of something similar that seems normal in our context?
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I probably wouldn't have noticed the ad but if I did, I wouldn't have reacted the way that June did. It sounds so horrible but when I'm on vacation I want to be treated like a queen, especially if I'm paying top dollar to be there. I know that wading into the water in a tux is a cruel description, but as a patron, I would want to be reassured that I made the right choice of hotel and be comforted by the image of a staff member willing to help me. In reality, he need not ruin his tux, but the thought that I would be getting quality service would put my mind at ease.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think these kinds of expectations are prevalent in any type of "service" context. For example, going out to eat at a restaurant. Do we perpetuate class oppression in these scenarios? Or are we all just part of a system that we don't have any control over?
ReplyDeleteI think we definitely perpetuate class oppression. Like when June was on vacation, she tried to negotiate on a lower price with the locals even though she could afford the items at their original price. This is similar to when people tip at a restaurant. For some reason I cannot understand, people think tipping is optional. It isn't actually mandatory, but to not tip your servers is a disgrace! If you have enough money to eat at the establishment, then you should have enough to tip your servers. These waiters and waitresses are serving you in an attempt to make your dining experience pleasurable. They are often treated as lower class citizens, simply because they are the ones serving instead of being served. Similarly to June, we try to keep the amount we spend as low as possible, forgetting that these people live off of our gratuity.
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