Fresh Prince Episode

So I was up late the other night watching reruns of the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire and there was one line that really struck me (well, okay it was a poem):

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Jazz and i are black. But carleton, what are you?

So this comment probably flew by my younger self when I watched it the first time, but this time over it seemed so pertinent to the class. When I heard it, I thought a lot about performance. What kind of person do we perform? What kind of identity does Will accuse Carelton of performing? One assumes Will calls Carleton out for not acting “black enough”. It turns out to be a complicated statement. What does black mean? We look at Jazz and Will and might think that being black means wearing baggy, brightly colored outfits instead of a pastel sweater and kahkis that Carleton has on. Or maybe we can hold on to the fact that Carleton states his love of poetry while Will disagrees. Does this mean that blackness has something to do with not liking poetry? Well, of course it has nothing to do with either of those things. But it’s interesting to think that Carleton and Will are both performing what they think they, as black teenagers, they should be.
Bringing this back to class I think about any of the characters we’ve seen pass for another race. Whether it’s Rena taking on a authoritative tone or John Griffin following the lead of the man who shines shoes, we can see that the passer is putting on some kind of act. However, in the act of passing we can also see that the person was always acting to some extent. Rena and Griffin were always performing how they thought a person of their race and gender should act. Because they can change so easily to act another role almost gives it away.