Thoughts on Whiteboyz

I kind of found this film disturbing and sad in terms of the portrayal of blacks, or rather, how they are perceived—blacks appear as under-educated, foul-mouthed criminals (drugs, jail, weapons, etc.) and this image of black people is what Flip and his friends want to emulate.  In this way, the peformative aspect of racial identity—or what’s perceived to represent black identity—is definitely visible throughout the duration of the movie.  

I found the contrast between Flip and Khalid’s reaction to being arrested and placed in jail interesting; while Khalid recognizes that he is an automatic target due to his race, he’s angered and is conscious that an arrest signifies a tainting of his record, Flip glorifies the experience because he thinks it will legitimate his thug/hustler type persona.  Instead of being ashamed or worried, he is excited.  Khalid points out that he (Khalid) is in jail on account of his race whereas Flip’s stupidity is really what got him arrested.   

Flip continually asserts his blackness, but what does being black mean?  The definition of blackness is so arbitrary—it means different things to different people and historically, the categorization of people according to race was arbitrary as well.  Science and law have both been used to legitimizes of racial classification—science offered “reasonable” determinations and law enforced these classifications…sometimes, even the law doesn’t follow its own guidelines. For example, in two Supreme Court cases, Plessy v. Ferguson and US v. Thind, the Court employs different standards to reach their judgment; in the former, it used scientific/biological reasoning, saying that Plessy couldn’t ride in the white train car b/c he had too great a percentage of black blood (it actually wasn’t all that much…).  In the latter case, the Court ruled that Thind, a Sikh male native of
India, wasn’t white because he didn’t look like it…in one case race is based on genetics and in the other it’s based on appearance.

Sorry…I know went off on a tangent there…