Devoted to the Insurance industry and all thing related

Sometimes technology can turn around and bite you right in the butt.  Salisbury University President Janet Dudley-Eshbach went on a trip to “Mexico, Belize and Guatemala this past January” with her college age daughter according to a Washington Post article.  Dudley posted some of the photos from the trip on her Facebook account with the intent of making them private.  Evidently she didn’t click the correct button because the photos were open for every Facebook visitor to see including WBOC.  

Some background, Dudley-Eshbach “is a specialist in Latin American studies who lists Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges among her favorite authors on the school’s website.”  During their trip in Mexico they stayed on the island of Cozumel where they “befriended a local man – Dudley-Eshbach thought his name was Enrique – who took them on snorkeling tours.”  

It was with this man that one of the photos was taken “which showed her brandishing a stick before a Mexican man with a caption saying she had to ‘beat off the Mexicans because they were constantly flirting with my daughter.’”  According to Dudley-Eshbach “We posed the picture, and if you look at the picture, my daughter is laughing uproariously.”  

One question that might be on the tip of your tongue is how should Salisbury University respond?  Another might be should they punish her in any way?  So far it doesn’t appear that there is much of a response from the University other than some personal conversations between Dudley-Eshbach and her higher ups.

It’s difficult for me to know where to start considering all of the things wrong with this entire scenario.  Regardless of who she works for or in what industry she makes her living she needs to be held up as an example of how pervasive the ideas of colonization and the “other” or “exoticism” has become in our society.  

This is a woman who is ostensibly Caucasian and holds a position of great power not only monetarily but also at the top of an educational institute.  She has obviously read a great deal of literature by Latin American authors, many other nonfiction books about various countries and areas throughout Mexico, Central and South America and speaks Spanish.  Yet she finds it funny to joke with a native Mexican about how he is flirting with and hitting on her Caucasian daughter.  The joking around might be tolerable but why did she have to snap a posed picture of the scenario?  Ha ha, that’s so funny.

I wonder what the reaction would have been by Salisbury University and the overall media if Dudley-Eshbach and her daughter switched places with the Mexican man – the one that she can’t even remember what his name was – or a Guatemalan man, etc?  Do you think many in the U.S. media would stand for a Mexican or other Latin American man – or woman for that matter – claiming he/she couldn’t keep a Caucasian guy away from his/her daughter and having to beat him away with a stick?  

By the way does it look to you in the above photo that Dudley-Eshbach's daughter is laughing "uproariously?"  Looks more like she's not too keen on the entire set-up and embarrased out of her mind.  While the guy appears to be having a ball.

Presidenta.  ¿Qué piensa usted que él diría si usted debía preguntarle sobre la foto?  Tal vez, "Fue una broma."  Sî yo se que esto era una broma pero qué importancia tiene el acto de un Mexicano codiciando a una señora americana blanca?