It was a pretty brain dead thing to do, don’t you think?
Military drill teams and Broadway chorus lines are arranged by height. Does anyone complain that they are on the short end?
Probably the dumbest part was admitting it. I remember in class photos there was always a bunch of shuffling kids around, and it probably did result in clustering kids by skintone among other things. But the photographers never said what they were doing, of course back then the culture was more willing to accept that professionals know what they’re doing so we shouldn’t worry about it.
I was looking at an old high school yearbook from the 1920's. There was one black girl in the graduating class. Her senior photo was after all the other senior although her last name began with a B.
An ugly time, very ugly.
Agreed, and so breathtakingly brain-dead that the story is remarkable.