{"id":5824,"date":"2015-11-06T15:00:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T20:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=5824"},"modified":"2015-11-06T15:50:44","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T20:50:44","slug":"more-giraffes-than-black-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=5824","title":{"rendered":"More Giraffes Than Black People"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i37Jcl-baJE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE:<\/strong> Visit Maryland has now removed the video from YouTube. Twitter reports that it is also gone from Baltimore&#8217;s Penn Station. @visitmaryland is so far quiet on the subject.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.visitmaryland.org\/\">Visit Maryland <\/a>has air-brushed African Americans out of Baltimore. If the above official tourism promotion video, playing on an endless loop in Baltimore&#8217;s Penn Station, is to be believed, more giraffes live in Baltimore than African Americans.<\/p>\n<p>Black people should not be deemed too scary to feature in videos touting any part of Maryland. Nevertheless, their absence is especially glaring&#8211;and I imagine galling&#8211;in a video about majority-black Baltimore City.<\/p>\n<p>Del. Jeff Waldstreicher (D-Montgomery) noticed the video during a visit to Charm City and has written the Commerce Secretary to demand its removal from public circulation:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Letter-to-Secretary-Gill.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5825\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Letter-to-Secretary-Gill.jpg\" alt=\"Letter to Secretary Gill\" width=\"2244\" height=\"2904\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Letter-to-Secretary-Gill.jpg 2244w, https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Letter-to-Secretary-Gill-232x300.jpg 232w, https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Letter-to-Secretary-Gill-791x1024.jpg 791w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2244px) 100vw, 2244px\" \/><\/a>Beyond the blatant racism, the video is also economically foolish. African Americans have a lot of tourism dollars to spend. As Del. Waldstreicher points out, there is enormous cultural and historical richness in Baltimore black history. Don&#8217;t we want African-American tourists to think of Baltimore as a potential destination?<\/p>\n<p>Whitewashing Baltimore is not going to make Baltimore more appealing or its well-known problems go away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATE: Visit Maryland has now removed the video from YouTube. Twitter reports that it is also gone from Baltimore&#8217;s Penn Station. @visitmaryland is so far quiet on the subject. Visit Maryland has air-brushed African Americans out of Baltimore. If the above official tourism promotion video, playing on an endless loop in Baltimore&#8217;s Penn Station, is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=5824\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">More Giraffes Than Black People<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[414],"tags":[1488,1723],"class_list":["post-5824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baltimore-city","tag-jeff-waldstreicher","tag-visit-maryland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1vW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5824"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5831,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824\/revisions\/5831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}