National Geographic magazine is taking responsibility for its historical racist coverage.

Editor-in-chief Susan Goldberg acknowledged in an article titled “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist” that the publication has ignored non-white Americans and perpetuated racist stereotypes.

“Some of what you find in our archives leaves you speechless,” Goldberg wrote in the editorial, published online Monday.
“It hurts to share the appalling stories from the magazine’s past,” Goldberg added. “But when we decided to devote our April magazine to the topic of race, we thought we should examine our own history before turning our reportorial gaze to others.”

Our April issue is devoted to exploring race—how it defines, separates and unites us. Read the story behind the cover: https://t.co/PPTVg3UpM8pic.twitter.com/5kunxfDrHt

— National Geographic (@NatGeo) March 12, 2018

For the special issue, Goldberg asked University of Virginia associate professor John Edwin Mason to analyze the publication’s reporting since its founding in 1888.

Mason concluded that “until the 1970s National Geographic all but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic workers,” according to Goldberg.
She added that the publication “pictured ‘natives’ elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché.”

Goldberg also said she was reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the likelihood that, in just a few years, white children born in the US will be a minority. She wrote that she planned for the magazine’s workforce to be diverse as well.

“It hurts to share the appalling stories from the magazine’s past,” Goldberg wrote. “But when we decided to devote our April magazine to the topic of race, we thought we should examine our own history before turning our reportorial gaze to others.

“We have a duty, in every story, to present accurate and authentic depictions — a duty heightened when we cover fraught issues such as race.”

We are kicking off a year-long series of stories about race, starting with our April issue devoted to the topic. We begin by taking a look at ourselves. My essay on @NatGeo’s past, and very different present. https://t.co/y4L70VZ8tG via @NatGeoMag

— Susan Goldberg (@susanbgoldberg) March 12, 2018

Here are some examples of the racist and appalling things National Geographic has published in the past:

• African-Americans were excluded from National Geographic membership until 1940, even as the magazine wrote about African countries.
• Referring to Aboriginal Australians, a caption read, “South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings.”
• For a 1962 article about South Africa, published months after a massacre of black South Africans, the reporter did not interview any black South Africans.
• One piece called the antebellum South, where slavery was legal, “a chapter of this country’s history every American is proud to remember” in 1965.

Overall, we are happy that National Geographic has decided to acknowledge their racist past. However, let’s see what they do moving forward. We are interested to see if their narratives will change.