So, Jean's whole yelp situation has me (re-) riled up about something that I didn't notice until I started spending a considerable amount of time online in forums and other community-based websites. Namely that... people are fucking crazy, racist, misogynist, homophobic cowards.
Now wait, hear me out. Maybe you're taking what I said in a way that I don't mean or... naw, you've probably got it right. It is pretty straight forward. So let me explain.
One of my favorite websites is IMDB. I'm a self-professed couch potato who LOVES tv. More often than not I'd rather be at home watching tv than doing say... well damn near everything. I don't feel bad about it, so let's move on. I go on IMDB to check out the casts to my favorites shows and movies, see what things my favorite actors are in, etc. Eventually I started posting on their forums (for shows and actors). They're a great information resource for spoilers and little known facts supplied by other nerdy tv geeks like myself. It was heaven. Well at least until I started noticing a disturbing trend.
On virtually every forum for a Black actress there's always that one douche who says something like, "(insert actress name here) is so beautiful. What's she mixed with because she can't be full-Black?" Or, as I like to translate: "I'm super racist and have all of these repressed feelings about totally loving Black women but you know Americans hate Black people so if someone could please just tell me that this girl is like half-Mexican or half-white, hell I'll even take that she's got a great tan so that I can repress all this angst that I'm feeling, you'd totally make my day."
At first I really didn't think that much about these comments because, coincidentally enough, the first time I read it I was looking at Halle Berry's forum and she's mixed. I just thought "what rock has this dude been living under? doesn't everyone know she's half-white?" But then it got a bit... hinky when I started running into it everywhere. I saw it on Freema Agyeman's page (half-Iranian), Salli Richardson-Whitfield's page (part-NA), Megalyn Echikunwoke's page (half-white), Rashida Jone's page (half-white) and Jessica Szohr (lots of stuff) but again all of these actresses are mixed so I got irritated, but kept it moving. (There's also this very strange tendency for some posters to put in part-Asian actresses' bios a detailed breakdown of their racial mixture and link them with other, completely unrelated, mixed-Asian actors that was so weird, but seems to have been cleared up in the last few months.) But when I stumbled on this lovely thread on Freema's page I became even more sensitive to it elsewhere.
The Freema thread is really important because you can tell that for certain people this had been building up and everyone, on both sides of the issue, responded from a place of frustration. Some of the comments were valid (on both sides) and some made me think that these people were dumb as rocks. But in the end I agree with the idea that continually asking about these women's mixed-status was yet another way to denigrate Black women and racist as all hell.
I also think that some people's defense of themselves was... pathetic and akin to saying "I'm not a racist, my best friend is Black." For instance, the OP's comment that he didn't mean what he said in a racist way, he just had a preference for middle-eastern women and knowing that Freema was part-Iranian cleared some things up for him... *side eye*
I'm sorry I just can't. I know other people attacked him for the racism, but can I just get on him about how stupid he sounds? I don't believe not one person who tells me that they only find certain kinds of people attractive. What sense does that make? Now you can say that you tend to only date women who have dark hair, tan skin and green eyes. Hell that's a preference, but does that mean that you wouldn't find a blonde woman with pale skin and blue eyes attractive. Hell nah! So why is it that when it comes to Black women, especially, so many men say some dumb shit like "I've never been attracted to Black women before but Naomi Campbell/Halle Berry/Beyonce is hot." What are they single-celled organisms? Humans are (allegedly) more complex than that.
Fucking idiots. Now back to the racism...
I see it on boards in lots of other ways too. For instance, staying on the Freema train for a moment (I love her!), in last year's BBC production of Little Dorritt people went ape shit because she was cast. Little Dorritt is Dicken's book about... hell I don't know, I just saw the movie, it's on my reading list... Whatever, check out it's wikipedia page. Anyway, all the hubub was because some people did not believe that Freema, as a Black person, should have been cast to play a white character. They also felt that this liberal trend in BBC productions to create casts for these period pieces that look more reflective of modern England was at least annoying (some people have termed it racist, certainly without fully understanding what the word means). But I mean, it wasn't the multi-culti version of Cinderella. At least the cast made some sense. But shit, even if it didn't who gives a shit. I care about the story and the acting. I don't give a shit what race the person is. And this has been happening on stage for forever... get over it!
I sort of jumped into the debate because, as a Freema fan, who thoroughly enjoyed the production, I didn't see the point in griping about casting a peripheral character, not meant to be blood related to any of the main characters, as Black. What's the harm in that? I think I know what it is, but I'll save that for a bit later.
Essentially what I'm saying about the anonymity of the internet is that it exposes a lot about how we think about race. I've pondered these websites every time someone says that racism doesn't exist. Or that we're not a racist country. It's utter bullshit. We're all racist. Those idiots who have to know that these Black women aren't all Black are racist. As am I, and others like me, who have to say "no, you can't take them away from us." And granted I'm biased that what I'm saying, while wrong, is for the right reasons, essentially that you won't deny these women's black identity simply because you're uncomfortable, doesn't mean that I'm not in some way inflicting a similar kind of damage by doing what I've done throughout this blog. Black is not their only racial identity and since I don't know how they choose to primarily identify I don't have the right to decide for them. I fight against this all the time for my nieces. People who don't know them don't have the right to classify them as mixed when their primary form of identity is Black. (Granted they're kids so they really don't know or care, but considering some interesting things that happened after MJ's death I'm pretty sure where they stand on the spectrum at the moment.)
But this kind of BS also reveals something else. Essentially, people feel damn free to say any and everything they want on the internet. That sort of anonymity allows people (of all races) to spout some of the most racist, misogynist generally depraved shit I have ever read. I don't know how many times someone's posted a link on facebook about something race-related with the express warning to either ignore the comments or read the comments for entertainment. Or how many times I've decided that reading any more of a certain thread would drive me insane. Or these douches who felt no qualms about resorting to blatantly racist and sexist stereotypes about Asian women when talking about the (sad? pathetic? weird?) plight of "The Hipster Grifter." These are the things that people would certainly never say in public, but with the cover of their keyboard they have at it.
I think that people spend way too much time talking about how a PC culture is destroying our society and how "you can't say anything anymore" but not enough time, if any, talking about when you can say certain things and through what medium. It isn't a surprise that people who have no idea that white supremacist groups are alive and well, if not even more dangerous than in the past, don't understand the full extent of the internet as a conduit of sharing ideas. Do a quick google search on white supremacist groups (being careful of course) and you'll turn up a slew of articles about how groups in the States are connecting with one another and with European counterparts through email, websites, etc. They're not gone. They're hiding in plain fucking site!
But this is an extreme example. To turn back to what started this whole fiasco, let's look at the random everyday people who want to know if their favorite Black actress is really Black. Implicit in their queries is a (racist) fear that they would actually find a Black person attractive. And while this seems simple, it's really not. Because they're afraid that if they find this "full-Black" Black woman attractive then that makes them someone who could say ask that Black girl sitting next to them in Soc class out for a movie. Or someone who could one day have (part) Black children. Or someone who would have to call their parents out for saying the n-word or their friend for sending that blatantly racist email. Essentially, there's the fear that they would have to become someone who thinks about race in a more present way than most white people ever do. (gasp!)
At the same time these people are worried that if their tv-crush is Black then it means that they have become somehow less white. This is definitely what was happening with the whole Little Dorritt situation. One Black character "infected" Dicken's "authentic" story of an England before Black folk. For these people there is a white story (that they would just call a story) and story for people of color. So in a modern setting there are places for Black, Brown... whoever. (At this point I'd like to point out that Dicken's story isn't authentic because there have been Black people in England at least since Queen Elizabeth I and Asians have been in England since the 5th century or so). But still these idiots think that us melanin-blessed folks should be kept in their place. So there will never be a Black Mr. Darcy or an Asian Captain Wentworth. Hell maybe it doesn't even have anything to do with time. I mean, did anyone else notice the storm when Pierce Brosnan recommended Colin Salmon as the next James Bond... geesh. This is just as problematic as racial zoning in housing, hiring based on racial preference, etc. because it says that, contrary to popular beliefs, we have very strict raced understandings of our world that manifest in decidedly racist terms.
I'm just saying that even if people are smart enough to keep these sorts of things under wraps in face to face encounters. They surely don't do this online. So if you want to know the places where I think people will learn racism in these next few generations. It's not on TV or in books. It's online and at home.
So when my nieces ask me to watch cartoons I say yea. But when they're old enough to ask me to use my computer, I'll explore it with them.
