Do you want White toast with your OJ?

When Arizona passed the immigration reform law, allowing officials to stop anyone they deemed as “possible immigrants”, I decided that we had gone too far. After Obama was elected in 2008, everyone was screaming for a new, “post-racial” America. But it’s not true. If we were in a post-racial climate, we wouldn’t have people stopping other people. We wouldn’t have a person calling 911 on a Greyhound bus because they heard someone speaking another language and thought they heard the word “bomb”. We wouldn’t have American citizens being forced to carry around passports to prove they are citizens. And as for me, well, I wouldn’t have to feel like a second class citizen in the airport.
I was flying home from my trip to Spain, waiting for my luggage at Boston’s Logan airport. It finally came up the conveyor belt and I grabbed it, ready to bolt for the door. I was in a rush because I had to catch a bus back home; also because I saw a TSA agent lurking around and I knew that because of my skin color, I was probably a person of interest. And I was right. The agent approached me, just as I had my hand on my big, black bag. “What is your nationality and country of origin?” the TSA man asked me in a bored tone. “I’m American.” I handed over my passport. “How long have you been a US citizen?” What kind of a fucking question was that? I pay taxes, I go to school here, I am a contributing member of society, I have spent all of my life in the US and I sing the National Anthem just as loud as everyone else. But I didn’t say any of that. “I was born in Dallas, I live in Maine, I was gone for a two week vacation.” He didn’t say anything, he just gave me my passport. This was after being frisked and double frisked in Dublin, after having my bags searched in Barcelona and having to go through security twice in London.
I had had it. That night I was staying in Portland, ME with my then-boyfriend and his roommate Sean. My boyfriend Dylan was white, his roommate Sean was black. He was always talking about black issues and watching black comedians and the whole nine yards. That night the topic of OJ Simpson came up. The thing is, nearly everyone I have ever talked with is understand the impression that I, like many blacks, think it was good that he got off. I thought he should have been convicted, he should have gone to jail. Sean disagreed. “Think of all the times that white people have killed black people and they got off. It’s not that I think OJ didn’t do it, it’s that you know blacks have been prosecuted for so long.” I understood this. But when you do something, when you commit a crime (we all know he did it, guilty or not guilty) one deserves to bear the punishment. But, I was the sell out, I was the one that didn’t want to be black, that wasn’t embracing my culture. And instead of standing up for me, my then-boyfriend took his roommate’s side. It wasn’t even about OJ. It never is. The next week, Dylan broke up with me, citing my new job offer and the two hour long distance.

Money Makes the World go round...

In Bangor, Maine no one dies. That is, not from drive-by shootings. There are no gang wars on the street, no pimps and Hos. It's quiet. I went down to Thai Lounge at 1:20am and no one worries about getting shot. I read on a blog that Maine was the 3rd safest state in the US. And that, according to a comment, it's because of the lack of minorities. I'm not going to say that it's wrong. But, the fact is, the most dangerous state should then be Mississippi, because of that has the largest number of African-Americans- 38%. But it's not. The most dangerous state is Nevada and there are 8% blacks. It doesn't follow.

I hate it when people think that the only criminals are blacks. And I hate that I've lived in Maine so long that I jump to the same conclusion. I'm sitting in class and my white classmate's telling our TA a story about how he had a gun held to his head when he lived in New York, and he's talking about being stuffed in a van and I remember thinking, wow, I bet those guys were black. But I couldn't tell from the story if they were or not. But we have this idea that all the evils of society are caused by minorities. But yet, I've spent 20 plus years in Maine. In my town, alot of people don't go to college, much less finish high school. Drugs are surprisingly easy to get. More girls that I knew growing up are pregnant than graduating. Some of the people in my town have bad grammar and drink cheap beer instead of Grey Goose. Everything that happens in "black communities" happens in my town. Everything that is supposed to be attributed to blacks (laziness, sexual promiscuity, drugs) happens in Maine. I'm not saying Bangor is Compton, because it's not. Nothing's perfect. But people should be looking at socioeconomic status, not so much race. Stealing for example. It's not that blacks steal.

At UMaine, everything from cars to bikes to jewelry to cellphones were stolen. But it's not blacks. Generally, people steal because they have nothing. Poor people steal. Often black people are poor. But that doesn't mean all people who steal are poor. It's not valid. It's not realistic. It's liking saying all white people are like reality show people on "The Hills". And we're also supposed to be stupid. The problem is segregation is still huge. Minority schools do not have money. When there is no money, there is no books, no teachers, no education. I didn't go to high school ( I was homeschooled). My local high school is majority white. But there is little support for academics. Students rarely graduate from a 4-year college, and there is no AP or Honors programs. If this were a "black" school, people would say the students are lazy and dumb. But it's not. So they don't say anything. But I just did.

Are you down with BDR?

Nothing in life is ever completely black and white. Perhaps it seems that way, the ever passing faces learning in to get a glimpse. But it's not because we want to learn about others. No, it's because we're noisy and we're curious and we're eager to figure out everything about that person. We look at someone for a second and decide if we want to be there friends. Sometimes we guess wrong, but we don't even know. My friend Greg is a tall, skinny white guy with a green backpack and loves the environment and making the world a better place like I do. But we were eating dinner and we saw a tall, black football player with the school sweatpants on walking past our table. Greg told me that he wouldn't know what to say this man, because he thought they wouldn't have anything in common. But we don't know that because we make snap judgments.

That's why I fail at the dating game. It's not self-pity or loathing, it's not even a call for attention. It's the truth. Because if you live in a place where I live and you look the way I look, you're not going to get a boyfriend. I about 12 when one of my then friends Marissa started "dating". She had a boyfriend,an "older man" at 14. She was my height, but thinner and blonde and cuter and her boyfriend was the most popular guy. Then, my friends in Girl Scouts started to have boyfriends and I liked boys and I wanted to date, but I wasn't that person.

I wasn't lucky like that, because I wasn't blonde enough or white enough or cool enough even. The idea that a black girl could find "love" in Maine seemed impossible. But I never had a problem with the idea of interracial dating. But people think that we're so different, that no one has anything in common and it's not true. My joke is that interracial dating works for white guys and asian women, black men and white girls. And it's because of the stereotypes that goes with both subsets. But for black women, we don't have anything. We're supposed to loud and fat and in your face and angry. Ok, maybe we can cook fried chicken. But I'm vegetarian. So I can't do that.

I was 17 when I went to college, and I knew that going to a school with 10,000 people I was sure to find someone. But the problem was this: I dated, sure. I went to parties and made out with some guy to make my self esteem higher, but I couldn't have bought a boyfriend. I dated a guy named Ben freshman year, but in truth he loved the ladies and would have dated any race. The next guy I dated was also named Ben. But he told me his parents wouldn't be cool with him dating a black girl, yet he was interested in at least trying it out. Just to see what it was like. It mustn't have worked well. He was still in love with his (white) ex and he broke up with me. There were several boys that I had a crush on, but I either knew they wouldn't like me or I figured they wouldn't. I was too dark, my hair wasn't right, etc. etc. Even black men didn't like me. I wasn't lucky. In fall 2009, I began dating a guy I fell in love with. Though he was white, I jokingly said that he was blacker than I was. He listened to black music. He had a poster of a black person on his wall. He played basketball and his best friends were minorities. And for the first time, race didn't matter. But then, as couples do, we broke up 5 months later and he started dating a girl the following week. And the first thing I wondered was "is she white?" But I never asked.

Interracial dating shouldn't be as big a taboo as people make it out to be. It shouldn't change the way people date. I know that black people, not just white people are often against it. I think the black argument is that we should "keep it in the family." I think the black women especially yell at white chicks for "stealing brothers." I don't agree with that, but I understand it. I've always been attracted to guys outside my race. Always. So I think we should be able to date who we want. But I also understand the argument. The black men in Maine get way more play than I ever will, possibly more than some white guys. It's because they're tall and strong looking and they allegedly have...well we know what they have. So by all means the white chicks can date them. But the worst thing is when they think they know everything there is to know about black history and black people just because they are dating a black man. Recently, I almost got into a fight at a party. A girl who will remain nameless (but only because I don't know her name)was what my friend Leta and I call a "Stove Piper"- check urbandictionary for def. She was all over every single black guy at the party- including one of my black guy friends. "Hey, hey look at me, I wanna talk to you," she said, trying to get my friend's attention. I was a little drunk and we had had past non racial issues at a previous party. So I said, "You know what, I don't think he's that interested. He's ignoring you." She looked at me and gave me her best white version of a black girl finger shake. "Oh no girlfriend, you better believe he's into me. They (meaning black guys) are always into me." I walked away. Mainly because I wanted to spend my weekend graduating, not in a jail cell for assault. She wasn't worth it.

So what's the message that we should take away? We, as humans, need to get over ourselves, get over the idea that everything is face value. It's not. We can't judge a book by its cover. I mean, we can, but it's not worth it. Girls can go BDR (again, urban dictionary) and I don't mind. I don't judge. We shouldn't judge.

bad stereotypes better than no stereotypes?

In the movie The Celluloid Closet, a documentary film about homosexuality in Hollywood, the actor Harvey Fierstein discusses the negative portrayals of gays in film, and in the interview he says that “Even though so many of the gay characters in the early films are portrayed as sissies I would rather see a negative representation than no representation at all”. But, while Fierstein believes that poor images or homosexuals in film are better than an absence of gays, when it comes to blacks in film, I disagree. I don’t think that by continuing to feature minorities, regardless of their roles, we will change stereotypes.

When I was younger, I used to watch television shows with my parents, and with the exception of LeVar Burton on “Reading Rainbow”, I never saw minorities on everyday television shows like “Law and Order” or “ER”. When I was a pre-teen, three of my favorite shows were “Dharma and Greg”, “Frasier” and “Friends” hit comedies from the 1990s featuring stories about middle class Americans and their everyday interactions. But I can count on one hand the number of times when any of those shows featured a permanent black character. Minorities just did not exist- at least not on television and I didn’t like that there wasn’t anything that reflected my race, or my experience as a minority in America. But the lack of minorities changed, in my opinion, with the invention of reality TV. I was eleven when I became addicted by the drug that is reality television and I was watching “Survivor’ and I saw Gervase, the only black contestant on the show and I was thrilled.

There was a minority on television, doing everything that the white contestants were doing. If someone had asked me then if I thought that this type of coverage was better than no coverage, I would have said yes. But that was 2000 and now shows like “The Real World”, “A Shot of Love” and “Keeping up with the Kardashians” all showcase the a few token minorities- but they’re not trying to win a million dollars on an island, they’re hip-hop artists with baggy pants and a drug problem, black girls with big hair and bad attitudes and baby mamas with multiple children by multiple men. After watching a recent episode of singer Ray J’s reality show where women (mostly black women) fought each other, I decided that in my opinion, perhaps no coverage is better than this misrepresentation. I think in order to change Hollywood, we must place more minority directors, which will lead to minority writers and actors. When women first burst into the Hollywood scene, they too had to fight for their roles in films. While roles for actresses, especially older actresses, are still limited, we are seeing more female directors, writers and even producers. Minorities in Hollywood are still fighting to catch up.
After looking at stereotypes presented in the four films, I would say that such films, at least in my case, caused me to question my self esteem and my place in white society. It was very much like the fact that even at a young age, I felt the need to be well-behaved, to be polite and reasonable, because I knew that the way I was viewed was the way my entire race would be viewed, and the same thing existed in film. With blacks being portrayed as lazy, stupid and ignorant Hollywood teaches us just what we are supposed to think of blacks. So, if this is the cause, can we move past these stereotypes and make a noticeable change in the upcoming decades. Earlier in the year, I went to see a film called The Bounty Hunter with actress Jennifer Aniston. I went to see the film because I thought the story sounded good, that it would be entertaining. It didn’t’ matter that the film featured two lead white actors or that no minorities ever appeared onscreen. But if this film had the exact same story with lead black actors, it would be called a black film and immediately audiences tune out.

These so called “black films” usually feature characters in films like “Barbershop” or “Honey” and feature the usual stereotypes. If I were to look into the future of film and television, I think that stereotypes will get better. I am optimistic, because even as I write this, I can turn on the television and see shows like “Without a Trace” featuring several Hispanic actors or talk shows like “The View” that features two African-American co-hosts (out of five). We have a chance to change minority stereotypes, but we can only do this with the creation of more diverse shows and willingness from mainstream America to think outside the box. Since the election of Barack Obama, I don’t think that America is now all of a sudden post-racial, that after years of stereotypes and misconceptions we are now free of racism, but I think that even though we have a long way to go, I see many changes.
One of my favorite shows as a college student is “Sex and the City”, but it never featured minorities. Now, when the first movie came out, a black character had a pivotal role. The 2009 film Precious, featuring a majority-black cast as well as a black director and producer, not only broke through mainstream, but won key Oscars, including Best Supporting Actress (for Monique). I realize that even in 2010, I am not going to turn on a television and see lead black actors on every channel and in the next few decades I probably won’t see that either. But even I believe we have come a long way. My friends once told me that by 2050, we will no longer have a Caucasian majority; rather races will be mixed and blended. If this is the case, then changing stereotypes and creating a more positive representation of minorities would greatly benefit minorities. It would allow people to not judge a book by its cover. When people see me, they often think (or appear to think) that they know everything about me. That’s why they ask if I live in the ghetto, if I have children, if I wear grills, but all the answers are no. If we create positive stereotypes, then perhaps people won’t ask questions like these, they won’t need to because they will see things other than black drug deals and prostitutes. And certainly we’re getting somewhere.
No longer do we have white actors in blackface, black slaves who sing and dance and appear ignorant like Prissy in Gone with the Wind. Gone are the Gus characters in Birth of a Nation that chase after women like the monster in Godzilla. But just because those outwardly racist films are no longer made, it does not mean that the lesser overtly racist films did not have a great influence. I watched the more modern films, Diary of a Tired Black Man and Monster’s Balls; there is no mention of slavery or the Civil War. With Diary of a Tired Black Man, the movie is so present day and modern, but even though the stereotypes have changed, they are still powerful. Blacks eventually stopped being just slaves, but now the men are a modern day Gus, and are shown as being pimps, thugs, drug dealers, abusers and womanizers.