Outrage at whites-only image as Uganda climate activist cropped from photo - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Kenya Evelyn wrote:Outrage at whites-only image as Uganda climate activist cropped from photo

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has called out racism in media after she was cropped out of a photo featuring prominent climate activists including Greta Thunberg, Loukina Tille, Luisa Neubauer and Isabelle Axelsson.

Nakate made the comment in a video which has since gone viral, adding that she now understood “the definition of the word racism” for the first time in her life.

The group had given a news conference in Davos on Friday when Nakate was then cropped out of a published version by the Associated Press, a US news agency. She questioned the removal on Twitter.



“Why did you remove me from the photo? I was part of the group”, she tweeted in response. Other agencies, including Reuters, misidentified Nakate as Zambian activist Natasha Mwansa. Reuters’ currently available version of the photograph identifies the other four activists in the picture but not Nakate.

David Ake, the AP’s director of photography, told Buzzfeed UK that, under tight deadline, the photographer “cropped it purely on composition grounds”.

“He thought the building in the background was distracting,” Ake said.

In the viral video, Nakate elaborated on what she considers the erasure of black and brown voices in conversations surrounding climate change, pointing out that people who look like her are most vulnerable to rising global temperatures.

“We don’t deserve this. Africa is the least emitter of carbons, but we are the most affected by the climate crisis,” she said. “You erasing our voices won’t change anything. You erasing our stories won’t change anything.”

Supporters and fellow climate activists came to her defence, sparking a dialogue on racism within environmentalist spaces and the need for better focus on climate justice.



“It’s disgraceful that not only is Africa ignored, it’s also deliberately removed from the picture,” Theo Cullen-Mouse, a 17-year-old, Irish climate activist.

“Africa has contributed the least, but will suffer the most from climate breakdown. The least we can do is give Africans a voice,” he added.



The AP has since replaced the cropped photo with its original, claiming “no ill intent”. The caption for the new image, however, does not reference the switch or explain the previous cropping.

The Guardian



I trust the West not because they do no wrong, but because they allow themselves being corrected when they do wrong.

Of course, I believe absolutely nothing in AP's explanation. The cropping is a damnatio memoriae, and even if the immediate cause was lack of sensitivity, this lack of sensitivity is still a manifestation of racism.
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Patrickov wrote:I trust the West not because they do no wrong, but because they allow themselves being corrected when they do wrong.

Of course, I believe absolutely nothing in AP's explanation. The cropping is a damnatio memoriae, and even if the immediate cause was lack of sensitivity, this lack of sensitivity is still a manifestation of racism.



I don’t think racism is the explanation. She was cropped because she would be regarded as strange looking (almost like a Klingon infact). The media sanitised the image for middle class viewers. East Asian media would do the same. Had she been an attractive looking African, she would not have been cropped.

So only attractive young women are allowed in promoting the elite’s new cause to justify their position as the ones who get to make the choices over who gets what, when and how, and to explain why poverty is unavoidable. No men in the image, I am afraid. Men, or indeed women who look like Klingons, just don’t elicit sympathy the way beautiful young women do.
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foxdemon wrote:I don’t think racism is the explanation. She was cropped because she would be regarded as strange looking (almost like a Klingon infact). The media sanitised the image for middle class viewers. East Asian media would do the same. Had she been an attractive looking African, she would not have been cropped.

So only attractive young women are allowed in promoting the elite’s new cause to justify their position as the ones who get to make the choices over who gets what, when and how, and to explain why poverty is unavoidable. No men in the image, I am afraid. Men, or indeed women who look like Klingons, just don’t elicit sympathy the way beautiful young women do.


As a matter of fact Thunberg or everybody else in the photo are not that attractive either.

While I cannot say myself free of such bias, I think having any kind of bias in publishing this image is unacceptable and whoever engaging in this should hold their heads in shame.
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Patrickov wrote:As a matter of fact Thunberg or everybody else in the photo are not that attractive either.


I concede Thunberg and the one on the far right aren’t anything special, but the other two would be considered attractive by most. Maybe we could open a thread as a poll and see how the guys rate them. Oh, wait, Zuckerberg already created Facebook for that.


While I cannot say myself free of such bias, I think having any kind of bias in publishing this image is unacceptable and whoever engaging in this should hold their heads in shame.



I agree. If they are honest in this being about the environment, then people should mean what they say. Substance rather than appearance. Focusing on four young, middle class women does come across as a rather contrived publicity stunt.
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ThirdTerm wrote:Image

The AP photographer was trying to get a picture out fast under tight deadline and cropped it purely on composition grounds because he thought the building in the background was distracting. Greta Thunberg was the main focus of the story and others were irrelevant.

Yeah, I'm sure that's all it was. :roll:

When the media shows you a limited picture of reality, they are trying to manipulate your reality for you. They do this all the time.

For example, last year, a tour guide was stopped by a film crew and not allowed to pass while they did a shot of the street. Meanwhile, the film crew were letting all the cars go by.

The tour guide yelled out: "Why are you letting the cars go by but not myself and the ten cyclists behind me?" The film crew yelled back: "Bikes are too distracting. Cars are more normal."

About a dozen bike tours go by that very spot every day, so I consider this to be normal. But TV has decided not to show people images of bicycles going by, and they do this because they are paid to normalized car ownership - a source of advertising dollars.

Likewise, the media sells WHITE PAIN in order to get permission for wars against non-white resource colonies.

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