Objective Dissent

This is Paula Patton. Known for her roles in Precious and Déjà vu, Paula is what many call racially ambiguous. When I first saw her in a movie, other than the fact that she is gorgeous, I found that I had to ask her race. Many others around thought that she was white, while I thought she was black. It turns out she is multi-racial. Nevertheless, this got me thinking about passing. I mean passing, as in, from black to white. Back in the day, whiteness was represented as “raceless.” The one drop rule, the idea that one drop of black blood makes a person black, created a “myth of white purity”. Therefore, “the burden of racialized identity” was on the African Americans. In the grand sense of things, many mixed race persons, or mulattos, were able to achieve this whiteness through passing.  

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This was the song I wanted to do for my music video analysis initially, but had to save some ears. This song is “Birthday Song” by 2 Chainz and Kanye West. This is video and its lyrics are a very good example of hegemonic masculinity and femininity. The over all premise of the video is that all he wants is big booty girl. Therefore, throughout the video, it shows many of these big booty girls. 2 Chainz goes on to describe the many times he has bands everywhere, and he is the realest nigga breathing. He goes on to talk about he’s ballin’ and you are in will call. 2 Chainz present himself as a hyper masculine figure, who is dominant because he has money and status. The video goes on to show many women dressed very scantily and dancing provocatively. The video and the lyrics of the song places women on a lower level then the male leads and portrays them as merely sexual objects. One particular scene I found important in proving this point was during Kanye West’s verse. Kanye’s lyrics continue the theme of using women as sexual objects and praising his wealth. West’s verse actually instructs men on how to interact with women who will not cope with his demands. It is video like these build on the premise that black males are hyper masculine and will never be on the same level as whites.

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This week's lecture on Jamaica and skin bleaching got me think about the likelihood of the same happening in Africa. That is when I came across this video. Africa has seen a very similar effect as Jamaica has. Scientists have learned "acquiring whiter skin was not only an obsession but a craze" and it has "left several persons with devastating disfiguring." The video shows an example of a man who has been using skin-bleaching steroids for years and has led to him having some of those very consequences. The fact that this is a problem speaks to effect of colonialism on these areas. Much like Jamaica, Africa has seen many years of white colonialism. For years, Africa was exploited for its natural resources and slaves throughout the world. The “memories of historical overtones of colonization, slavery, discrimination, mistreatment, and color rating in social class against dark skin” can be seen to as a cause for the supremacy of lighter skin. The problem is that so many are willing to take the risk to get lighter skin. When demand is as high as it is, the supply is definitely going to find a way to be there. So, even though there may be all kinds of legislation towards it, there needs to be a lot more done to stop this problem.

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"Another Naive Individual Glorifying Greed and Encouraging Racism" was a song off of Big K.R.I.T's Return of 4eva mix tape that I heard back in 2011. K.R.I.T writes about the person many black males have become. I chose this piece as way to demonstrate the how the black male has been subjugated and continues to dispossess himself. The song talks about how the black youth feel like the world doesn’t care about them and it leads to them following poor role models and deviant behavior. The song also talks about the role of hegemonic masculinity in this situation. It describes males as bragging about women that they slept with and how he displays his earnings through his attire. 

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Long ago off of the coast of the Africa, many a African were taken or sold away from there homes to become slaves in the new world. Many of these people were brought over on ships died and many more died before they even made it to the ship. For those who made it to the ship, there was only horror waiting. As many were raped, killed, and tortured, sometimes for no reason at all. Many of these struggles have portrayed in various art forms to illustrate just what was going on. Here I have a particular piece that struck my interest. This is a picture of an underwater sculpture by Jason de Caires. It's a sculpture that represents all of the slaves that were either thrown or jumped of slave ships during the Middle Passage. This is one of many underwater sculptures by Caires with this message. 

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About 80 years ago, one of the most tragic events in our history occurred as six million Jews were slaughtered in the “The Holocaust.” The Nazi party of Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, proceeded to separate the Jews from society and kill them. When I learned about this school, I was put off almost with the crude nature of it all. Besides the fact that the event was dreadful, I write about it because of how similar it was to the oppression of blacks. I recently watched “The Pianist”, which portrays the life of Władysław Szpilman as he survived this horrific event. While this film doesn’t focus on the concentration camps, it does focus on society outside of them. It vividly illustrates the early stages of the holocaust. It shows how Polish Jews were demoralized and dehumanized by the Nazi people. The Nazis used the Jews race as a means of treating them like pigs. In the film, they used fear to impose the difference in race. They used the presence of fear and race to create a system of surveillance that kept the Jews at bay. The Jews were forced to carry work permits, much like when freed slaves had to carry slave passes. The power of race can create a system that keeps boundaries between us all. I detest the fact that six million people died because a group of people hated them. What kind of bull is that?

I remember last year when this happened. There many a tweet of majorities claiming to be upset because Rue and Cinna from the hunger games were black. In the book, it states that they are black, but apparently people look over that. Out of all of that, the thing that bothers be most was the fact that no one got upset that Thresh was black. Thresh had the same dark brown skin and golden brown eyes as Rue, but he was described much like a savage. Why were the black characters portrayed as nice were thought be white, but no one questions the one described as a killing machine?

picture via http://hungergamestweets.tumblr.com/