I think I see now why someone else asked, "Would it be okay if the legend was horizontal?" Because then you don't have the "on top/below" connotation. Is that what you mean by "portrayed as negative", because they are visually lower?
Re how faces are emotionally loaded, that is somewhat the point of using Chernoff faces as a visualization method, though I understand your concern that therefore it SHOULD not be used as such a method because it will convey ideas not implied in the data because of how we interpret faces.
Fundamentally though, to go to this data set in particular and away from the merit or otherwise of Chernoff faces, there's always going to be a tension to depicting the correlation between race and wealth in the US. One way or the other, you have to say the same thing - Blacks are poorer; and/or Blacks have lower factors of general well-being (though somewhat unintuitively, not lower levels of hopefulness.) And you can't avoid the fact that if you have a data visualization that really brings home the correlation then someone is bound to assume causation in the wrong direction and feel the data validates their racist feelings.
But that doesn't make the attempt at using that visualization a racist one.
Re how faces are emotionally loaded, that is somewhat the point of using Chernoff faces as a visualization method, though I understand your concern that therefore it SHOULD not be used as such a method because it will convey ideas not implied in the data because of how we interpret faces.
Fundamentally though, to go to this data set in particular and away from the merit or otherwise of Chernoff faces, there's always going to be a tension to depicting the correlation between race and wealth in the US. One way or the other, you have to say the same thing - Blacks are poorer; and/or Blacks have lower factors of general well-being (though somewhat unintuitively, not lower levels of hopefulness.) And you can't avoid the fact that if you have a data visualization that really brings home the correlation then someone is bound to assume causation in the wrong direction and feel the data validates their racist feelings.
But that doesn't make the attempt at using that visualization a racist one.