I want to got back again and talk about this ad again. This time, what was said in who was allowed to speak, and what was being said in who was not being represented (or not being spoken for).
First on an intellectual level, it’s sort of an insult for a car company to use the voice over a radio broadcaster who had a history of making racist comments. Whether it is belittling the humanity of Hurricane Katrina Victims, or his well known racism against Latino and Latina Americans, when one sector of the population hears his voice, they hear freedom, patriotism, and Republican Christianity (Harvey referred to himself as a Republican Christian, party & nation-state first, of course). But the other sector will hear bigotry and oppression, a blatant reminder of those who hold onto white supremacy.
Second, I think on a common sense level, this ad was insulting to the experience of many Southerners, the fact that the image of Latino/Latina workers mysteriously absent from the ad, praising the farmer as the laborer for their virtues. There is virtue in hard work and the agrarian lifestyle, and there is also virtue in telling the truth and being accurate. The fact is is that Paul Harvey’s speech is outdate, it was written and spoken during the Jimmy Carter era in 1978.
The rural population has a great history in the United States. They birthed the Populist Political Party movement lead by one William Jennings Bryan, Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer, and George Washington Carver was one of the United States’ most influential scientists. While any compliment is good these days, I think that this ad really does not serve the current farming community all that well.
Alexis Madrigal’s piece from the Atlantic, The White Washing of the American Farmer made a similar case. There is a site, Real Rural.Org that presents a different side of California farming, telling stories in pictures.
I think we can learn alot from this site, and I am sure that a person could do such a project in Texas, and Kentucky, and other Southern states too.
