In the Jan. 11 edition of Random Lengths News we ran an op-ed by Carson Mayor Albert Robles regarding the development plans of California State University of Dominguez Hills and a re-calibration of the relationship between the university and the city of Carson. That same op-ed was also published on our website, but with an in-house illustration. Random Lengths News was surprised to learn that a graphic intended to illustrate the relationship between the city and the university overshadowed the worthy conversation about how to improve that relationship during the Jan. 23 council meeting.
Through phone calls from concerned Carson stakeholders about a week after, Random Lengths News found that the image was interpreted as racist.
Soon after, Random Lengths News received an email from Cal State University Dominguez Hills President Willie Hagan, which featured an eight point rebuttal to the mayor’s Op-Ed, including a response to Robles’ assertions:
That CSUDH and the CSU system ignored requests by the city to discuss the master plan update
That the CSUDH initiated environmental review process required for the university master plan despite City objection
That the CSUDH master plan includes a for-profit development that is not for exclusively educational purposes.
At the end of his rebuttal, Haggan wrote:
Let me conclude by saying I found the recent online article written by you in Random Lengths News and accompanying illustration, enclosed as Attachment A, more than a little troubling. The article uses provocative language to convey all of the above inaccurate assertions, along with several others, and defames CSUDH and the CSU. The illustration features an unclothed Black arm and hand representing CSUDH and a suited, White arm and hand representing the City of Carson. What message is this illustration intended to convey? I am not sure why such an illustration was even necessary. This was an illustration, which quite frankly, whether chosen by you or the newspaper, I found insensitive at best. Others may consider it racist.
It was through the frank phone conversations with Carson constituents that Random Lengths News learned that copies of the op-ed posted on our website was printed in color and passed around during the council session and that constituents quizzed the mayor about the graphic and what role he played in choosing it. But it was Hagan’s letter that gave us a clue to how the conversation about recalibrating the relationship between the city of Carson and university got overshadowed by a false allegation of racism in the first place.
This graphic was an unconsummated handshake superimposed over a rendering of the Stubhub Center in Carson The graphic featured two opposing hands poised to form a handshake. One hand was a cast iron statue representing the university as an institution, the other a flesh and blood represented the citizens of Carson. The cast iron arm did not have the appearance of flesh nor did it have a sleeve from a shirt or suit jacket. The fingers on the hand didn’t even have cuticles or fingernails that were distinguishable from the arm and hand. There is even a line, likely a cut, made by the sculptor at the edge of the arm that should have been a clue that it wasn’t an arm of a person.
There have been similar and legitimate controversies about racial imagery in the media such as the H&M ad campaign in which an African American child was featured wearing a shirt that read, “The coolest monkey in the jungle” and Dove ad campaign that ran months earlier, in which a black woman takes off a brown shirt to reveal a white woman as if to communicate the idea that white femininity is the most desirable standard of beauty. Dove has repeatedly denied that was the case but ad campaign rode on that legacy of racist imagery that goes back 200 years.
The graphic ran by Random Lengths cannot credibly be tied to that legacy. Instead, what we see here is a cynical attempt by Hagan to distract Carson citizens with a false accusation of racism so that Carson residents don’t actively engage in a conversation about what the university owes Carson.