Brown Bag Lecture Series brings racial issues to light

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To Javier Pescador, racial biases of Mexicans during the Great Depression era still can be seen today.

Pescador, a history professor, gave a lecture Thursday at the MSU Museum Auditorium examining the work of photographer Dorothea Lange and the racial biases her photos show. Lange is famous for her photo “Migrant Mother,” which shows a white woman struggling during the era. Although Pescador said Lange’s work has artistic value, it has perpetuated the stereotype of Mexicans as farmers and laborers.

“Dorothea Lange did a wonderful job documenting the plights of white American workers,” Pescador said. “But when it came down to documenting the conditions of Mexican workers in the same location, she adopted a completely different approach.”

Pescador took examples from the book “An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion” by Lange and her husband, sociologist Paul Taylor. The book includes a mixture of photos, captions and text illustrating the struggles of those who moved to California in the Great Depression looking for work on large farms.

Many photos shown during the presentation did not show Mexicans laboring in the fields, but simply were portraits. Lange’s photos with nonwhite subjects at work did not show faces or provide names and quotes from the subjects.

“She portrayed them with an alienation position,” Pescador said.

Pescador’s presentation showed how white farmers were seen as displaced, while Mexicans were viewed as “natural migrants” and were not expected to own their own farm and property.

“The notion any group are migrants by nature is biased in prejudice,” Pescador said, “You see a lot of people leaving Michigan right now. Anyone can become a migrant.”

He also attributed racial tension and prejudges of the times to have contributed to the lack of diversity photographed in Lange’s work.

Arts and humanities freshman Carlyn Deaver agreed with Pescador and said it wasn’t surprising Lange focused on white subjects.

“Obviously it was the culture back then to focus on white people,” Deaver said.

But Pescador said the issue isn’t something that’s been left in the past.

“This is all the way up to the present times,” he said “Mexicans are associated with farms and fields.”

Pescador’s lecture was part of the Brown Bag Lecture Series, which is in its 14th year and has given more than 100 presentations ranging from poetry and fiction reading to concerts, films and exhibits inside the museum and elsewhere.

“It was a great presentation,” said John Beck, associate director of the MSU School of Labor and Industrial Relations. “All the talks are so diverse. We look at the cultural intersection between work and labor.”

The next presentation in the Brown Bag Series, Working on the Imperial Farm: Convict Labor and Discipline on the Fernando de Noronha Island Penal Colony, Brazil 1830-1897, is scheduled from 12:15-1:30 p.m. Jan. 14 in the MSU Museum Auditorium.

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