The New York Times (NYT) annual online Holiday Gift Guide with its selection of gift ideas from the staff of the New York Times have gone “off color” in 2009.  Not only is there a vast array of gift ideas–DVDs and video games, electronics, books, home and dining items and more–but this year there is a special section for “people of color”–gifts created for and by people of color. Surprise! Surprise!
Politics Daily: The “people of color” guide lists 18 products that presumably have a special appeal to cinnamon-skinned, mixed-skinned, coffee-skinned, black-skinned people — sort of a rainbow of dark and sand-and-mud-colored shades. Among the gifts on the list are beauty and hair products, children’s books, women’s clothing, a henna kit, nail polish, Indian- and Somali-infused fashion designs, each described briefly, accompanied by picture and price. My own personal favorite: the “Wise Latina” T-shirt.
What exactly did the paper hoped to gain by producing a section that seems blatantly racist at worst or incredibly naive at best. Was this a case of good intentions gone awry? Why assume that everyone who is not Anglo-European is a “person of color”? Why go back to segregation, however stylish it may sound when labeled something else? Back to water fountains for coloreds? That’s the slippery slope.
