Hidden Biases and Victim Blaming

I found the following picture while on Sociological Images. I would like to thank Lisa Wade for her article which provides an excellent example of two significant issues: racism and victim blaming. Before I get to that however, let me give some background our visual reference.

The picture you see on the left is actually part of a series of billboards that were being put up in the Highland Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. The caption, when translated to English, reads "I give you love, you gave me asthma". A fairly powerful statement in my opinion.

The billboards are said to be part of an ad campaign to get parents in the target area to stop smoking around their children. The agency responsible for the advertisement, First5California, was created from the .50 cent tax levied against each pack of cigarettes sold in California.

There are a some aspects of this story which are often overlooked and to which I would like to draw our attention:

• The area in California where these ads were placed is approximately 70% Latino/Hispanic. Though it may seem to be an unnecessary statement, the other 30%, is not. By marketing the ad toward the Latino population, not only is the agency missing approximately one-third of the area residents, but they are also demonstrating discriminatory behavior which may be referencing hidden biases.
• Given, that the race or ethnicity of a person has no direct bearing on that person's ability to speak either English or Spanish, the creators of this ad thought it necessary to print this in Spanish so as to direct their ad toward the target audience. The U.S. Census Bureau found, that in this particular area of the U.S., over 70% of the population speaks English either "well" or "very well", while 60% of the population speaks Spanish. By printing the ad in Spanish the agency excluded the non-Spanish speaking population because the assumption can be, and often is, made that they aren't talking to me.
• Another aspect to this is that while second hand smoke can lead to childhood asthma, so do other factors. Many of the poorer families in this area are Latina women raising children as single parents. The median annual income for a single woman in this area is over $10,000 less than the median annual wage for the total local population. There have been direct linkages made between poor housing and poor health. Environmental factors have the potential to adversely affect the health of those living in poor housing every bit as much, if not more, than smoking.

In my opinion, this is an excellent example of how people who 'just want to help' fail to address root issues and focus on the victims instead. Might it be a better use of the agencies time and resources to give a helping hand rather than pass judgment and lather on guilt?