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What Does Smokey Bear Symbolize

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What Does Smokey Bear Symbolize
This week’s reading in Understories by Jake Kosek was Chapter 5, which is simply, yet powerfully titled “Smokey Bear is a White Racist Pig”. In this chapter, Kosek insightfully argues that Smokey Bear is a symbol of the exclusionary, racist and nationalist history, that is engrained in the U.S. Forest Service. What has allowed Smokey to become such a long-standing symbol, even with all this tension and hate filled history?
Kosek opens by portraying the disdain that many local residents have for Smokey in New Mexico, claiming the bear is a constant reminder that the woods are no longer the Chicanos and acts as a “prison guard” who keeps these unwanted people out. As well as highlighting the opposing and more common view that Smokey is “a symbol
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