Brett Pelham
1 min readDec 1, 2021

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I agree with Julia.

One can never know intentions for sure, but I assume that the photographer was making an anti-racist statement about how suprising it is to see women of color in positions of status and power -- and to see White people in subservient positions. It might have been even more obvious that this was the anti-racist message if the maids had been male.

Did this issue of Vogue really have no comments at all about the intended meaning of the photo? Did they imply in any way that people of color should dominate Whites? Like the United States, Brazil does have a long racist history, including eugenics, for example. Brazilians even coined the term branqueamento (“Whitening”) to refer to doing whatever one could to become “Whiter.” But I interpret this photo as a reminder of the long history of racism rather than a recommendation for a future world.

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Brett Pelham

Brett is a social psychologist at Montgomery College, MD. Brett studies health, gender, culture, religion, identity, and stereotypes.