s not peddle, people do, but Coleman (142) is showing that the ski industry has ôsoldö images of whiteness to promote skiing in American culture in a way that ôreinforced the construction of a white ethnicity.ö In doing so, even in regions of diversity like the West, the ski industry has ôwhitewashedö western ski resorts.
In ôwhitewashingö western ski resorts, people of color or ethnicity have been totally removed from ski promotion and participation. Coleman (142) relies on euphemism as her rhetorical device to make this clear, claiming that western ski resorts have ôtransformed local people of color into invisible workers or exotic objects of tourism.ö When she uses the term ôinvisible workers,ö Coleman is using a euphemism to soften what she is actually arguing. She is actually arguing that western ski destinations have silenced and enslaved people of color through their whitewashing of the ski industry.
The typical appeals of the ski industry have been based on two ethos that exclude minorities, either the European ethos or the American West ethos. It is in this analysis that Coleman uses both personification and oxymoron to make her point more vivid. She refers to Vail, Colorado, as the ôgranddaddy of destination resorts,ö an image that appeals to the wealthy middle- and upper-classes as an image of white marketing (Coleman 144). She also uses oxymoron to make her argument more forcefully that the ski industry has removed color from its tourism and promotion. As Coleman (144) writes, ôThey did so by creating an attractive image of European ski culture that excluded people of color, helping create and ethnic whiteout on the ski slopes.ö ôEthnic whiteoutö is an oxymoron because it contradicts itself in the sense that ethnicity refers to people and cultures who typically are not ôwhite.ö
The advertisements promoted by the U.S. ski industry avoided any reference to ethnicity and instead offered ima...