Reading the Pictures: "My Mom Doesn't Have any Papers, (America)"

Watching the striking exchange between a second grader and the First Lady, I'm interested in how we actually perceive this girl-without-a-name.

By drawing unavoidable focus to the fact her Mother is undocumented, this young girl does something striking; she forces us, at least for an instant, to look at her and see her.

A second later, however -- demonstrated by how the way the First Lady deflects the bombshell of a statement by converting a specific situation to a general one, drawing these second graders into an abstract relationship with the U.S. Congress -- we're able to slip back into that customary perceptual mode in which we see-her-but-we-don't-see-her, which is where one habitually resides, on a daily basis, in encountering any number of real live undocumented Latinos.

YouTube Video.

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Comments

[nee]

01:21 AM on 05/25/2010

Shame on this little girl's mom - the choices she has made are making this little girl miserable. Instead of coming here LEGALLY she made the choice to come here ILLEGALLY. Wrong choice. ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS no matter where they come from, what language they speak, what color they are, who they are related to, or how cute their children are need to GO BACK TO THEIR OWN COUNTRIES!

[asnevitt]

10:20 AM on 05/24/2010

The fact that we still don't know her name informs how much we don't and don't want to see her.

[madatnewsmedia]

08:10 PM on 05/26/2010

I don't have a problem seeing her, but her mother is the reason why she's miserable! I don't have aproblem with them being in this country at all, but I do have a problem with the illegal part of it! Her mother was silly to say that so that the little girl heard.