1. “Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 16, US civil rights leader and clergyman
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2. Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Ferris State University
Us Versus Them:
A Critique of Divisiveness in Popular Culture
Some of these images are vulgar; most will offend members of the audience. The presenter did not create the images. The images are not meant to shock, but to stimulate honest discussion. Many of these images are found on objects in the Jim Crow Museum.
David Pilgrim
Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion
Ferris State University

3. We are a learning lab—using objects of intolerance to teach tolerance
We are a learning lab—using objects of intolerance to teach tolerance. See,

6. That’s Not All, Folks
Our goal is to get people to talk openly and honestly about race, race relations, racism, and other isms.

7. What do you see in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that?
What more can we find?

8. Racial Propaganda
During the Jim Crow Era (1870s through mid-1960s) racial attitudes, values, norms, laws, and etiquette were supported by millions of everyday objects that portrayed blacks as intellectually, morally, and culturally inferior “Others.”

9. Everyday Objects Reflected and Shaped Ideas About African Americans

10. A racial hierarchy was supported by objects that mocked and belittled African Americans.

11. Coon Chicken Inn

12. Everything Old is New Again

13. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me…
A surf shop in Laguna Beach, California hosted this
sale in 2011.
Billboard in Grand Junction, Colorado, 2011.

14. Safe White Space
2007
1937

15. I Ain’t Yo’ Momma

16. Racial Imagery Allows Us To Summarily Dismiss Others

17. The Other As Threat

18. Who Knew?
30 Rock star and former Saturday Night Live alum Tracy Morgan’s June 3, 2011 comedy performance turned into a hurtful rant in Nashville, Tennessee. Morgan attacked President Obama for supporting the LGBT community, called homosexuality a choice, and threatened to stab his own son to death if he confessed that he was gay.

19. Hate is, and always has been, a primary organizing force.

21. One Result of Hatred is Violence
Michael Donald, Mobile, Alabama, 1983
Emmanuel Winston, Austin, Texas, 2010

22. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail

23. Not (only) a Black Thing

26. Early 1900s Anti-Suffrage Postcards

27. Violating the Script
May 29, 2008

29. Killing as Gaming

30. They are…
Ugly, simple, stupid, dirty, unpatriotic, inferior, sexually promiscuous, disease-ridden, violent, un-Christian, weak, irresponsible, surly, rude, clannish, arrogant, needy, culturally parasitic aliens.
We are…
Beautiful, complex, smart, clean, patriotic, superior, modest, healthy, peaceful, Christian, modest, strong, responsible, good-natured, civil, selfless, humble, self-sufficient, proud contributors to society.

31. Keep Them Out
Mike Narducci, from Omaha, Nebraska, speaks into a microphone as members of the Nebraska Minuteman Civil Defense Corps stand along Dakota Avenue in South Sioux City to protest illegal aliens on August 25, (Jim Lee/Sioux City Journal).

32. That African Is Not One of Us

33. There is a cultural war going on in America, and during times of war, Us-versus-Them thinking becomes normative, even respectable.

35. 2010 Halloween Costumes

38. Images matter. There are images that are cemented in our minds
Images matter. There are images that are cemented in our minds. Here are some images that I can neither ignore nor forget.

49. “This country would be better without racist imagery
“This country would be better without racist imagery. Ironically, the best way to combat these images and the messages they convey is to examine the images as examples of democracy and social justice gone wrong.”
~David Pilgrim