I’ve been wanting to write a Duck post about the experience of a woman with visible minority status in IR for quite some time now. I was waiting for the right moment. So thanks to the American Political Science Association (APSA), the professional association for US-trained political scientists, the moment has come.
Yesterday morning, an email came from a friend with a screenshot. The screenshot showed an attractive Asian woman in a frilly top who looks like she’s having a good time looking into the camera. I was confused. Then I read the blurb next to it: this was a promotion from PSNow, one of the official APSA dissemination bullhorns. They were promoting my recent piece with Sarah Stroup in Perspectives on Politics on international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) and authority in global politics. Instead of contacting us to request a photo, or choosing a stock photo that reflects the subject of our article, APSA decided to accompany this promotion with a photo of a random Asian woman.
I was stunned.
So it’s pretty obvious to me why this is offensive, but let me spell it out.
- What does the Getty Image “Portrait of a young woman smiling” have to do with INGOs? Or authority? Or politics?
- What happened to my co-author?
- What kind of search terms were being used to even generate such a photo that APSA found worthy of posting not just on PSNow, but tweeting?
- Has all of my work on INGOs boiled down to some irrelevant stock image?
- Is it that hard to Google “NGO” for images related to the work being advertised?
- Yea, “all Asians look alike,” but REALLY?!
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