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Whiteboyz

I was surprised to hear that Whiteboyz was really a movie about class. As I watched whiteboys I couldnt help but think that they reminded me the white boys I went to private school with. The boys and my school definately made the same claims that their white skin color was a birthmark adn that their real skin color was that tiny dot on their forearm. Now these kids came from rich families so im even more confused if the movie was mainly about race or class..

Erasure with respect to the real literary world

I was rather curious about the conversation that we had in class about

Erasure

tand the trend of “street literature”. I wanted to understand how this trend works in life outside of the novel. I came across a public library’s page and i found their definition of street lit:

“Called street literature, urban drama, and hip-hop literature, this exciting genre features fast-paced action, gritty ghetto realism, and social messages about the high price of gangsta life. Following in the tradition of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, the new generation of street lit writers speaks to the experiences of a wide range of characters – from the ordinary people trying to get by in the projects to hard-core drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, and gangbangers.”–Madison Public Library

From a little more research online, it is quite clear that street lit is a popular genre attracting people from the ages of 14-34. But there are also people who don’t like the recent influx of this kind of literature. An African American writer, Nick Chiles is quoted in this article. He is very reminiscent of the narrator of

Earasure

. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6299839.html

Interestingly enough, he goes into borders and gets upset that his novels and novels by Toni Morrison are “swallowed up” by the bright covers of street lit novels.

Authentically Black

I dont know if this has anything to do with the course, but I found it online and thought it might be relevant to our discussions lately. After watching Whiteboyz I began to think about the ways in which a white Rush Limbaugh with this video understands blackness. Now that I am aware that Whiteboyz is a comedy serious film, this parody attacking Obama’s authenticity as a black man seems more problematic. Because Barack is not from the “hood” and does not associate himself with the typical negative story of rags to riches like Al Sharpton or Snoop, Rush Limbaugh thought it would be appropriate to pit Barack Obama and Al Sharpton against each other with these racially tinged verses. Not only does he make Sharpton seem like a bumbling fool but he paints Obama’s success as something undesired in the black community. Limbaugh thinks he has successfully parodied the opposing qualities of Barack and Sharpton, but he was unable to subvert any positive message about race through comedy. I would rather watch the white characters in Whiteboyz misappropriate blackness and hip hop culture than be subjected to Rush Limbaugh’s terrible and offensive attempt at humor.

Victor Varnado

I am attaching a link to an article in the Village Voice this week entitled “White Like Me” that is a series of excerpts and interviews from the personal life of Victor Varnado, an albino-black comedian. It brings up many fascinating issues of race and hybridity, but also cultural constructions of the “freak” and “monstrosity” and really makes one think about how these discourses are in many ways similar. It’s also interesting because it brings the issue of representation and the role of media in shaping self-perception and understanding to the forefront. Tell me guys what you think of the article.

http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0717,westhoff,76434,15.html

Russell Simmons comes out against using curse words in Hip-Hop

I am posting a link to an article that talks more about Russell Simmon’s and Benjamin Chavis’s statement that offensive words, especially “bitch”, “ho” and “nigger,” have no place in Hip-Hop and should be removed. The interesting part is not just that Russell Simmons is a highly influential executive of a Hip-Hop label, but that both came out before in defense of freedom of expression, but now two weeks later have changed their position in light of talks with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson about the issue. In their statement, they referred to as “corporate social responsibility of the industry to voluntarily show respect to African Americans and other people of color, African American women and to all women in lyrics and images.” It is a complex issue, but it is interesting to see that the fallout from the Don Imus remarks is becoming so far-reaching. I think this can be viewed as potentially a very positive development regarding the using of hurtful language and imagery in music, what do you guys think?

The URL of the link is posted below:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070423/music_nm/usa_hiphop_dc

Op-Ed Column

There’s an article in the Op-Ed section by Bob Herbert that addresses Don Imus and influence of the media.  Unfortunately I don’t have a subscription to the NYtimes or I could post a link here, but I thought people might be interested in looking at the papers in Val.

A few thoughts about the clip watched in class…

I think quite a few interesting points have been raised during class, especially over this past week concerning white men’s taking on the role of a black individual.  Watching the clip from the FX show in Thursday’s class kind of struck me for a few reasons, one of them being the fact that one (actual) white men in the panel said that he feels like washing his hands after he has shaken the hand of a black person, as though the latter has contaminated him in some way.  For this particular white male, simple contact with a black person results in a psychological contamination, so for him, he doesn’t need sexual intimacy with a black individual to be tainted to some degree.  His comment really bothered me and it further disturbed me that this type of sentiment still lingers among some even in the 21st Century.  (Clearly, racism still exists–the fact that it remains doesn’t surprise me, but the idea of finding the mere touch of someone’s hand asrepulsive on account of one’s race got me/struck me.)  Professor P. asked us how we can begin to start to discuss these socio-political constructions given that many people avoid talking about race and hence, we lack a sensitive and intelligence discourse concerning it…to be honest, I don’t know how to answer that.  In an effort to be optimistic, I (would like to) think that educating people can help, and by people, I specifically mean targeting younger generations, especially during formative years.  Young minds are impressionable and I can only hope that as more time passes, people become more aware of historical and systematic racism–on a micro and macro level–that’s embedded in various aspects of our culture.  Though I don’t want to over-generalize, I do tend to think that contemporary young people are a bit more accepting and open to learning about others/Others than their predecessors.   

Racism is Cumulative

In my sociology class Drugs and Society we have recently learned about the Kindling Effect, a theory suggesting that over time the impact of stress on a person’s mental well-being becomes more and more detrimental. In other words, as time goes by a person is more susceptible to stress and it takes less and less stress to mentally perturb them. The Kindling Effect came to mind when I was reading Black Like Me and when we watched the clip in class about the white family who was made black. John Griffin claims to understand the sting of racism after being black for seven weeks. I think he has an idea of what it feels like to be discriminated against on the arbitrary basis of skin tone, but I don’t think he, or any person who is not black, will ever truly understand because he has not been black for his whole life, he has not been exposed to racism for his whole life. Yes, John Griffin is pained by the racism he has encountered on his stint as a black man but then just imagine the complexes that inherently develope and the entrenched hurt that a real black man must feel who has dealt with discrimination and “hate stares” for his entire life. I think the Kindling Effect is relevant here, I think that over time the black man’s protective skin wears thinner and thinner until finally incidents of racial ignorance ignite him that perhaps would not have ignited him several years ago. Bruno, the white dad in the television clip we watched, says something about how if he were black and someone called him a nigger he would react rationally, adding that black people should react rationally too and not fly off the handle. But he does not know, he can not fathom how he would feel after being called a nigger continuously since childhood. They simply don’t know and they can never know beacause you can’t imagine an individual’s history, you can’t take on years of discrimination and thus you can’t take on a realistic black identity. My point is that the effects of racism on the black psyche are a cumulative stress.

What was it about?

I was originally going to post about something else but this really struck me. So, whenever Professor Parham asks “so, what was this about” I am always pretty stumped. Maybe it’s because i’m in a racial passing class, but when I think about Pinky I think about the racial dynamic in the film. I don’t even think it is too rash to say most people would see racial conflict to be a big theme in the movie. Well, I was looking up pinky online to try to read what others thought about the movie and I decided to start with wikipedia because I like Wikipedia. Anyway, here was the plot summary:Pinky (1949) is a film which tells the story of a young lightskinned African American woman passing as white, who becomes torn between the needs of her grandmother and the love of a white doctor. Was the white doctor that big in the movie? Did I miss something? Granted, in every day life I might be thinking about things besides race when I watch this movie…but I still think it is a bigger part of the movie than tom (annnd we even had trouble remembering his name)