Comments for Racial Passing in Literature and Film

Comment on Whiteboyz: Khalid and Flip on Blackness by ميرزا

ميرزا — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:41:06 +0000

why do black people in america use Islamic names (Jamal, Khalid, Jameel, Hussein, etc…) even though they’re bacon-eating, church choir-singing, christians?

Comment on Whiteboyz by angelabrown

angelabrown — Fri, 18 May 2007 07:26:27 +0000

I could definitely see how Whiteboyz was about class. The working-class, check-to-check, struggling kind of life is what makes these Midwestern white characters feel as if they can relate to the ghetto life that rappers describe. The problem is that the white boys assume that poverty, the thug image, jail, drugs, and hip hop are the end-all & be-all of what it means to be black. That’s why they never imagined that Khalid’s house would be so much flyer than theirs, nor did they doubt for a second that he would have “contacts” back in Chicago. When Khalid freaks out about starting college classes, or stresses out about getting arrested, none of his white friends even understand why those things concern him. That stuff just doesn’t fit into the stereotype of what interests young black men.
One of the most interesting interactions between the black and white characters in this movie is the moment in which the whites say “nigga” in Khalid’s presence. Whether it’s directed to him or simply said around him, he’s not tryin’ to hear it, especially not from some corny wannabe rappers.
The white guys “sincerely” say nigga as a term of endearment and solidarity, but their true (racial) allegiances are revealed at the end of the day. When J Dogg loses his temper with Khalid, he calls him a nigger…clearly not in the brotherly way. If they believed that they were “down” enough to relate to black people, they would have had the good sense not to call a black man a nigger in a moment of anger. These white boys are only “down” relative to the folks around them. They’re actually pretty out of touch when it comes to what blackness means. Too bad they don’t find that out ’til the end that they hardly know anything about what they claim to “represent”…

Comment on Whiteboyz: Khalid and Flip on Blackness by patrice09

patrice09 — Wed, 16 May 2007 22:46:48 +0000

I disagree…this movie definitely was more progressive than an explotation. There’s more there if you really analyze it. But if you come at it sort of biased, angry, or frustrated (emotions which the movie does evoke PLENTY of times)then you’ll miss all of that…more movies like this need to be made in order to broaden and advocate the fact that hip hop is, infact, more complex than O’ Reilly and others believe it to be.

Comment on Whiteboyz by patrice09

patrice09 — Wed, 16 May 2007 22:40:22 +0000

These white boys may have reminded you of your former classmates, Shantel, but these “white boyz” were far from rich and, ironically, have more in common with the culture they were exploiting than they knew. Unfortunately, the “boyz” expressed their frustration and angst through gansta rap– the sub genre of hip hop which is more of a “report” (debatable yes I know…i don’t really support this 100% but thats a story for another blog entry…) of their situations in poverty and violence rather than an “expression” of what’s inside of them.
-Oh poor hip-hop….[sigh]

Comment on Whiteboyz by aajack

aajack — Sat, 12 May 2007 18:00:36 +0000

Vincent is right. I cannot begin to separate class from race, or even gender for that matter in this country. In Whiteboyz, however, the movie begs the question, which one dominates. I think it is a chicken and egg type question personally. These particular “whiteboyz” saw a certain type of lifestyle being lived by certain people and that they wanted that lifestyle and the luxuries as well: cars, alcohol, drugs, women, houses, and more cars. Antoher important aspect about the lifestyle they say is that is was depicted as easy, both achieving the success and the money. And they wanted it. So, what better way—in this country—is it to get all these things than entering the business of rap music which just happens to be predominately black artists? TV does not tell you about the struggles of most rappers, especially those who never make it. VH1, MTV, and the news channels highlights 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, the Game, and other rappers and portrays them as having “quick starts” and fast lives. In essence, TV does not give the stories of these rappers; they simply give the final product as if it happened overnight. People fall in love with these fictional lifestyles that is portrayed in the tabloids and video shows. Also, no one looks behind the characters. He may be 50 Cent on the records, but he is Curtis Jackson when sitting in the board room.
Vincent is also correct to bring up the fact that once something is produced, those who produce are no longer in control of it. They may have intended it to do one thing, but it is received differently. And as Silverman showed us, society’s (the receiver’s) perception wins. That is why I think that this movie could have been about class. It just got conflated with race, just like everything else in this country.

Comment on Whiteboyz by Vincent Chen

Vincent Chen — Fri, 11 May 2007 23:26:54 +0000

A movie about class? Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought so either, except to the extent to which race is tied up with class. But anyway, I’m not sure what it means to say a movie is “about” something. Like we said in class, once a movie or book is published, it’s out of the author’s hands and any claim about what the movie is “about” is valid as long as you have good evidence to support that view. Maybe the director meant Whiteboyz to be about class, and maybe a lot of reviewers think it’s about class, but it’s (to some extent at least) in the eye of the beholder.

Comment on Whiteboyz: Khalid and Flip on Blackness by swatters

swatters — Fri, 11 May 2007 18:25:55 +0000

Yea this movie was def a joke. And the end undermines the purpose of the movie as well.

Comment on Whiteboyz: Khalid and Flip on Blackness by tenique

tenique — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:40:11 +0000

I agree with you vincent I think the film is too obvious. I couldn’t help but laugh because some of it was so absurd. I saw the larger morals in the end but I also thought that Flip abandoning his “blackness” made the film less believable. I wasnt convinced that the director Marc Levin really knew how to resolve the story.

Comment on Twilight by Vincent Chen

Vincent Chen — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:30:09 +0000

I agree, the acting was great. (And apparently the people on imdb.com think so too.) From an English 69 point of view, I found it interesting how she was constantly passing. More specifically, how she passed just by changing her clothing and her accent and the sorts of things she said. Of course, she didn’t pass in the sense of sustaining a “false” identity for an extended period, but she did, for a time at least, “become” the person. That plasticity contrasted much of the rest of the movie, which portrayed racial barriers as very real and not so easily traversed (see, for instance, 1:21:30 into the movie when the Korean woman talks about how the blacks are too different for her to engage their community. I think there was a Hispanic woman who said something similar, though I could be imagining it.) It did, however, fit in very nicely with the last section (“Twilight”).

Comment on My initial reaction to Watermelon Man by heather721

heather721 — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:06:56 +0000

Although somewhere in my mind I thought/hoped that this film was made w/ the intention of encouraging social dialogue, I feel a bit better (about the movie) as Professor Parham pointed out that it’s a satire. I still find some things problematic, but at least I can now definitively “categorize” the film by genre…