Businessweek Warns That Minorities May Be Buying Houses Again

[garbon]

Slate really is the worst. Saw this as someone posted it on facebook.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/28/racist_businessweek_cover_bloomberg_businessweek_misfires_badly.html

Bloomberg Businessweek is a genuinely great magazine that does an amazing job of making business and economics news accessible and interesting, but this way of illustrating a cover story about the return of aggressive mortgage lending products is really something else.

The idea is that we can know things are really getting out of hand since even nonwhite people can get loans these days! They ought to be ashamed.

Update, 1:48 p.m.: Bloomberg Businessweek "apologizes" with a pretty categorical non-apology:

"Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret," Josh Tyrangiel, the magazine's editor, wrote in a statement sent to POLITICO. "Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we'd do it differently."

Note that Tyrangiel doesn't say they regret publishing the actual content of the cover, but the "strong reactions" that it incited. How hard is it to take responsibility for the cover, say sorry, and leave it at that?

Read more context on the controversy here

I clicked on that link at bottom to read more about "the controversy" and saw this:

A further update to the saga of that now-infamous Businessweek housing cover.

The actual story it illustrates is about the housing recovery in the Phoenix area and says nothing in particular about minority homeowners (though obviously Phoenix has a large Latino population). Instead it's about how housing recovery is on the one hand good for the American economy, but on the other hand we seem to already be in a new speculative phase with people talking about getting rich flipping houses, housing as a can't-lose investment, and all the rest of the mid-aughts madness. To go with the story they commissioned an illustration from a Peruvian illustrator who, in a missive that Businessweek shared with me, explains "I simply drew the family like that because those are the kind of families I know. I am Latino and grew up around plenty of mixed families."
That's understandable enough as far as it goes. Obviously, though, as Businessweek well knows someone else on the staff should have been able to see how this was going to look in the U.S. context. It's pretty clear if you read the story that there's genuinely no effort here to impugn minority homebuyers, but that's certainly how I read the image, and I think it's a very natural reading of it.

[Ed Anger]

I'm sure the new york faggits at gawker will get their transgendered panties in a bunch too.

[CountDeMoney]

It's OK for Languishites that blame the housing bust on minorities and not the predatory lenders to point it out, but when Bloomberg BW does it, it's no biggie?

[Malthus]

A non-apology is the perfect response to a non-offence.

[fhdz]

A non-apology is the perfect response to a non-offence.

Exactly this.

I went to the artist's site and looked at his other work. You really, really, REALLY have to stretch, probably past the snapping point, to claim the guy is racist.

I actually quite like his stuff; reminds me of underground comix.

[The Brain]

He sounds racist to me.

[garbon]

Oh I'd meant to post the picture.

[CountDeMoney]

A non-apology is the perfect response to a non-offence.

Exactly this.

All that's missing is some watermelon and friend chicken, some scratch-off lotto tickets, and a riced-out import with a 3' spoiler with a PR flag hanging from the rear view mirror.  Hell, even the dog in the upper left corner is a pit bull.

The only inaccuracy would be the black cat, as it is a known scientific fact that minorities are tremendously superstitious, and would never own one.

[Malthus]

Silly Businessweek. Shoulda ensured that they only used White folks on the cover.

[garbon]

The only inaccuracy would be the black cat, as it is a known scientific fact that minorities are tremendously superstitious, and would never own one.

Umm, what about the fact that they have money?

[garbon]

Silly Businessweek. Shoulda ensured that they only used White folks on the cover.

And then continue to perpetuate the erasing of minorities - like they did with that horrible Dodge ad that whitewashed the farming industry?!

[fhdz]

All that's missing is some watermelon and friend chicken, some scratch-off lotto tickets, and a riced-out import with a 3' spoiler with a PR flag hanging from the rear view mirror.

So all that's missing from the racist drawing are things that would make it racist. Got it.

[garbon]

I'd like to know why the black people have white people noses.

[CountDeMoney]

The only inaccuracy would be the black cat, as it is a known scientific fact that minorities are tremendously superstitious, and would never own one.

Umm, what about the fact that they have money?

Yeah, all the free money lenders were giving them to cause the housing bust and subsequent mortgage-driven derivatives market meltdown;  after all, it wasn't predatory lending practices, but all those damned dirty minorities getting all those mortgage loans they couldn't afford that brought our economy to the brink, remember?  It was nice to see Bloomberg BW reminding us.

[PDH]

I'd like to know why the black people have white people noses.

They are Ethiopian.