Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Class photo called ?offensive? and ?degrading?
An elementary school class picture is causing quite a stir after the photographer Photoshopped a cartoon smiley face over a boy's head.
David Claussen, owner of Broward County Pictures, took the photo of the second grade class at Sawgrass Elementary school, but was notified afterward that two of the students hadn't signed consent forms and needed to be removed.
"Claussen said he was able to use the photo editing software Adobe Photoshop to lift one of the kids out, but had explained to them that there was a problem with the second student. He was sitting in the front row, right in the middle ... He said he would have gladly come out there to reshoot the image. Instead there was talk about putting a star over his face and then, he said, the P.T.A. asked him to place a smiley face."
The news station could not locate the student or his parents for a comment, but was told the boy is no longer attending Sawgrass Elementary and may not even be aware of the picture's existence.
Parents at the school have had mixed responses to the altered photo, they ranged from feeling that the image is humiliating, to simply calling it "an oversight that has been corrected".
In an email to the local station, Sawgrass P.T.A. wrote:
"Broward Schools Photography covered the child's face using an inappropriate sticker. The PTA disagrees with how the photography company handled it and worked with the photographer to have the picture retaken this Thursday. Immediate action was taken on behalf of the PTA. We love and protect our children."
They said families who ordered the class photo will get a free copy of the new print.
Re: Class photo called ?offensive? and ?degrading?
Find me here instead!
I think there would be just as much of an "issue" if the face was white, yellow, or *insert color here*...
/dead
Y4M - The story mentions a star, so maybe that could have been done.
I, for one, would love to have Michael Baran weigh in on this.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home D
Bwahahaha!
I honestly don't know if it would have been better to use the standard yellow smiley face, or if using a skin-tone matched smiley face is actually offensive. I mean, apparently it was to some people, but then is it sort of like making him another race or something...? I really don't know. I think that even the scramble-face might have been interpreted as offensive since, well, it is used in many places but is most famously used on COPS and could therefore be interpreted as calling the child a criminal. There are just so many ways that mainstream culture has been sh*tty to black people and other minorities that it has gotten really hard to not accidentally contribute to them. (Though of course we still still have plenty of idiots doing it on purpose.)
FWIW I am not sure why the guy couldn't photoshop a student from the end of the row into his place and just delete the end-of-row student from the end--yes, you will have one shorter row, but it would avoid this kind of problem. It's not that much work; I've done similar things before when I used to help a friend with a 'zine. It takes like fifteen minutes to do nicely.
But its not like the parents of the boy were asking for him to be removed, right? He just moved away so they didn't have a consent form? Don't get me wrong I'm all about consent forms for your kids but I think they created a much bigger wave in trying to remove him then just leaving him and not making a big deal about it. I'm just saying - what are the chances his parents are going to come back and freak out that he was in that picture?
Two things:
1) to me, this does seem reminiscent of black characatures from the late 19th/early20th centuries, which are hella racists, or even black face (the "painting" of a face meant to look African American).
2) If this boy had been white, the photographer would not have agonized over using the "right" skin tone. When the school said "smiley face" I assume they were thinking something like this:
If it were a white student, no one would flinch to see a yellow smiley face (well, except that it would be weird in a class photo).
40/112
People sue over everything these days, especially privacy and photos of our children. There's no way the school could put out a photo without parent's consent.
msmery, I have to say it, I'm getting really damned sick of your "interpretation" on what it means to be black, what's offensive to black folks or any of your other asinine assertions on the topic.
You don't know what you're talking about and it's long past time you just accepted it.
Click me, click me!
I'm somewhere between
and
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home D
Yes,I'm smiling...I'm a marathoner!
Bloggy McBloggerson
CO Nestie Award Winner-Prettiest Brain-Back to Back!
2011 Bests
5K-22:49 10K-47:38 Half Mary-1:51:50
2012 Race Report
1/1-New Year's 5K-22:11
2/11-Sweetheart Classic 4-mile-29:49
3/24-Coulee Chase 5K-21:40
5/6-Colorado Marathon-4:08:30
5/28-Bolder Boulder 10K
All this right here. This was a (silly) solution looking for a problem.
I'm just talking about the likelihood of it actually happening.
@!!!!!111!!
But, I mean, they knew he took this photo right? I can't believe they were thinking that he wouldn't be in this pic even though they had moved and changed schools.
The kid was there for picture day. Everyone knows picture day involves a school picture. I wonder if there's enough here for implied consent. Plus, what about the registration paperwork? My kids' schools have always asked for blanket consent at the start of every school year.
Click me, click me!
Right. This school was doing too damn much.
Care to elaborate? I'm actually really curious and would like examples of what I have "wrong" and why.
40/112
I stopped reading at Broward county.
Home town, represent!
Go Florida. Winning at lyfe.
I'd like to know what you'd have to be smoking to think that a brown smiley face is anything on the same planet in similarity to this:
Click me, click me!
It seriously called to mind for me the "pickaninny" type illustrations:
PS, googling "black caricature" will bring up a bunch of drawings of Jack Black.
I don't think the photographer was being racist or is racist. The above is what I thought of when I thought, "how could this be seen as racist?" If my child came home from school with that picture, it would make me vaguely uncomfortable, though possibly because it's just weird looking.
But seriously, if you'd like to discuss my comments on race with me, I'd be very interested in what you have to say, either here or through PM. I don't pretend to speak on behalf of black people, I just contribute my reflections based on what I've learned throughout my life. I don't want to be condescending and I don't want to offend.
40/112