Read&Riot

I am assuming that because you all live in this same Eurocentric, patriarchal, heteronormative society that I live in, that what you see on TV shows and in movies aren’t completely accurate depictions of life for most people of color. Though it is at times hard to imagine a protagonist that isn’t a hot white female or a hot white male, we, people of color, should be able to. 

I mean the whole point of entertainment media is to connect to it’s viewers in order to gain popularity. Nobody is going to watch a show that little to no people can relate to right? Entertainment media gains popularity when it connects to it’s viewers. 

And no, I’m not saying that ALL entertainment media is bad. I am just saying that seeing a Latina on screen every once in a while being the protagonist of a show that doesn’t sexualize her by playing with stereotypes would be pretty freaking awesome. 

I mean there is Gloria from the show Modern family who I have to admit, cracks me up a lot. But even her PERFORMANCE is very in line with typical Latino stereotype: hot-headed, loud, dressing in more “promiscous” outfits, heavy accent, and the like. These sorts of characters embody the stereotypes people have about certain groups which in turn brands this type of performance as legitimate. So any Latino that goes for an acting audition nowadays is probably expected to look really hot, have an accent, and act “spicy”.

Often times when the directors, writers, or casting agents of a show or film are white instead of people of color, things get lost in translation and sadly, the result is the inaccurate and often racist portrayal of people of color. Take the movie Straight Outta Compton for example. An extremely offensive casting call made headlines with it’s awful description of the type of extras the movie was looking for. 

....Yea. It makes you cringe doesn’t it? Especially because this movie was about celebrating black artists and retelling their story. The casting agent that made this transcript soon took it down and the production staff told the media that they had no idea that this was a casting call for their movie and that they would change the transcript for extras that they are looking for. However, it just goes to show you that no film is safe from this type of discrimination. It just kinda makes me wonder where people will draw the line.

In an earlier post, I criticized the Suffragette’s movie’s actors for thinking that it was a good idea to wear shirts that said, “I’d Rather Be A Rebel Than A Slave” for a photoshoot promoting their movie. I was so surprised....seriously. DID ANYONE NOT THINK THIS WAS A BAD IDEA?

I mean I love you Meryl Streep but no. Just. No. You were great in Mama Mia, you have a wonderful voice but NO.

And as if Meryl Streeo hadn’t broken my heart enough already, after being asked if she is a feminist or not she goes and says this in an interview, “I am a humanist. I am for nice, easy balance.” 

I mean I get the fact that the whole “Feminazi” thing really drives people away from understanding what feminism really is. And of course I mean intersectional feminism because anything apart from that isn’t really feminism. But still Meryl....you let me down.

In defense of their clearly offensive T-shirt, the quote is actually one said by a white political activist and leader of the British suffragist movement back in the 1870′s. But given the fact that slavery has a very violent history centered around the mistreatment and brutalization of black people in the U.S., it is not the best choice for a slogan. 

As I mentioned in my earlier post:

To equate the white women’s struggle to be able to vote to slavery is just disrespectful. In the time of the women’s suffrage movement, black women were actively excluded from the fight for voting rights. However, women of color had much to do with the movement as well. The movie and the slogan is white-washing the suffrage movement in a way the media tends to do with historical events such as Stonewall.

The slogan that these women are using was one made a hundred years ago by a woman who probably didn’t care about what black women at the time wanted yet it was still used in the promotional campaign for this movie. 

I don’t think that Meryl Streep and her costars knew why their shirt was so messed up but that doesn’t really absolve them of any blame. These women are role models for a lot of people and the fact that they didn’t check themselves and their actions really is messed up. Or at least own up to your faults later and learn to see where people are coming from when they morally criticize you.

In a way this was their own PERFORMANCE. It was a way of depicting white women as slaves to the patriarchy and appropriating another groups’ true struggle of slavery. If these ladies had understood the true merits of intersectional feminism, perhaps they would not have worn those T-shirts. Performances a way of redefining how people view a certain group or person. This Suffragette’s movie is supposed to be empowering to women. However, it seems it will only serve to truly empower white women. 

In Cathy Cohen’s essay “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” she writes that she is interested in creating a new form of politics which is inspired by black feminism and their concept of intersectionality which can aid in creating a system where the “non-normative and marginalized people are the base of progressive transformative coalition work.” 

Maybe Meryl Streep should take notes...

In any case, Twitter as always, had a great response to this ordeal and I think successfully and clearly called out these actresses and why the T-shirt quote was so wrong. 

*snaps*

A fellow classmate of mine shared a video from Slate.com titled This is What Happens When Writers’ Rooms Aren’t Diverse. The video couldn’t ring truer. It named four common stereotypes that are portrayed by entertainment media when only white writers are calling the shots:

The Black Guy That Dies First

Let’s be honest. Who hasn’t heard this one? In your typical action movie that has maybe one or two black actors, one of them is always the first to die. The video makes a great point about the fact that the senseless and often insignificant killings of black bodies in movies only reinforces the notion that black lives do not matter. Their PERFORMANCE is limited to being a minor character and then being easily disposed of. What this does is embody the role of black people in U.S. society today. What do people get from this common stereotype on TV? The fact that the death of a black person, often male, is nothing important. 

The Black Best Friend

This friend is your token black friend and the person who gives you advice, who makes you laugh, who protects you from haters, and whose life pretty much revolves around the white protagonist’s life. They have little to no character development and the viewers rarely know anything about their personal life outside of how it relates to their white protagonist friend. As Key and Peele said in one of their skits, the black best friends says one of three things. “Daaaammnnnn”, “No He Didn’t”, or the ubiquitous “Oh HELL NAH.”

This character’s Performance is simply diminishing their character to a funny person who is not the most important character. This leads viewers to absorbe that ideal that black people’s lives aren’t interesting unless they relate to a white person’s life. 

The Weird Foreigner 

This character is most often portrayed by people of color though it is not limited to them. White foreigners are also commonly seen taking up this role. But why can’t a foreign person ever be depicted as normal? Nope, instead they make accidental inappropriate jokes that are often misconstrued because of their funny accents or they just really odd habits. This depiction of foreign people only serves to fuel the xenophobia prevalent in the US. It is true that most depictions of foreigners are funny and just for laughs instead of threatening. 

However, this still is telling the audience that foreign people are different thereby continuing to exclude them. This Performance of “weird foreigners” serves promote the stereotype that foreigners are outsiders to “modern US society” and they cannot ever possibly be accepted therefore they should return from where ever they came from. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit but this is honestly what it does to people at a subconscious level. 

The Ostensibly Asexual Asian Man

This is honestly so unfair. The emasculation of Asian men has been so prevalent in the entertainment media that it has impacted the way people view Asian men in real life. Going along with the stereotypes of Asian people that suggest they are more sensitive, androgynous looking, wimpy, and nerdy, the entertainment industry leaves little roles for Asian men outside of the nerdy or foreign friend. 

They are often viewed as men who can’t talk to women or men who are extremely awkward. If that’s the only thing you are absorbing about Asian men, how are they supposed to be viewed in any other way by potential romantic partners? On dating apps across the board, Asian men are seen as the least desirable. On the opposite end, Black women are seen as the least desirable as well but that’s another Tumblr post. 

This racist and often emasculating PERFORMANCE that dictates how Asian men are seen continues to exclude Asian male actors from any other type of roles and teach viewers that Asian men are lesser men. 

(Shout out to an actually cool role for an Asian male in the Maze Runner )

The (Often Wisecracking) Ethnic Help

Last but not least...the help. These people are often women of color working for a rich white person who acts ridiculous and is made fun of the the “ethnic help” when they mumble memorably witty jokes at the white person’s expense. But even still, the help is almost always a woman of color. The stereotype that Latina women are often maids and cleaning ladies is very prevalent within this paradigm. 

The PERFORMANCE that these people put on are usually positive since they are always cracking jokes or being sassy but that is all these women on screen amount to. They also have little character development and have very minor roles in the movies. It’s no wonder Kelly Osbourne could so easily and naively say in response to Trump’s idiotic campiagn promises, “If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?”

Yea she messed up. But at least she knew that she did! (Hope.)

But even while we acknowledge all these horrible stereotypes ever present in entertainment media, it is exciting to see that the hottest TV shows today are actually those either written or starring people of color. 

Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away With Murder, Empire, Scandal, Fresh Off the Boat, and Blackish just to name a few. You cannot deny that comments about these shows are almost always popping up on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

These shows are epic. 

Friendships are lost and made if you reveal which one is your favorite!

Okay maybe you won’t lose friends over these shows. But it is true that these shows that feature people of color in much more dynamic roles are finally getting the attention they deserved.

In an earlier post, I wrote about Viola Davis’ Emmy win this past year. She was the first black woman to win an Emmy for Best Actress in a drama. Viola Davis is the protagonist of How to Get Away With Murder. Her PERFORMANCE on the show was incredible. She portrayed herself as an empowered, intelligent, and successful woman of color with layers to her personality. It was the type of character that reeled in the viewer and commanded attention and it was beautiful. 

When she delivered her winning speech, she said that, “the only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity” and she thanked the writers that created this role for her that gave her the opportunity to act the way she has an win the award. It was a moving and heartfelt speech and it was an important speech that needed to be heard by all the people of the Academy that were present. 

It is in this way that PERFORMANCE in the acting industry can lead to redefining the way people of color are viewed in the media. This is reminiscent of Stokely Carmichael’s idea that the only way for black people to progress is by first redefining who they are and how they want to be represented. No longer will people of color be viewed as simple, one-dimensional characters that die off easily or make the audience laugh with their weird antics.

Earlier this year, my college class visited the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection to look and read through documents and media from the WWII era as well as the 1960′s US to observe and try to decipher the history African Americans and Asian Americans experienced during these trying times.

In the collage picture above there are four photos that are juxtaposing the differences and comparing the similarities of the types of protests that were and continue to be prevalent in the US in relation to the injustices being committed at the expense of people of color. 

In the library were countless photos of protests that took place back in the 1960s-1970s each showing the types of posters people held up and the type of people that held up those posters. In the above two pictures of the collage are photos from the Collection. People are carrying posters that say, “Hired Killers not Wanted” or “Jail the Cops Not the People.”

The two bottom photos show how people today are reacting to and protesting against issues of race that people of color face today. The people in the bottom photos are holding posters that say, “Stop Police Brutality” or “Am I Next?” or “Would You Shoot Me?”

It is scary how similar the posters are, at least in connotation.To many people today, the protests against police brutality in the US are seen as a “war on cops”. This is simply just an excuse in order to protect cops from accountability. The issue lies in the abuse of power on the part of law enforcement in the US.

It begs to question how the word TERROR should be defined within the context of a national problem. It has often been used by the government and the established powers that be in the US as a way of instilling fear in citizens of those deemed as adversaries. However, today it is now being rightly used by citizens to mean those institution or groups that attempt to hurt or oppress other groups within the US. Modern state violence exists and the police are once again being seen as terrorists, and rightly so. 

Today is not uncommon so see a couple dashcam videos popping up on Facebook and Youtube featuring another power tripped police officer brutally murdering innocent people of color. 

We have come so far in many way since the 1960s. We’ve got more advance technology, we have a black President, we’ve got Social Media as a new platform for social activism. We’ve got more superhero movie remakes than we can count on our fingers!

And yet, the posters in the pictures of protests taking place in the 1960′s could still be used on the streets today. Why is that?

So let’s talk about the difference between Freedom of Speech as a RIGHT and Freedom of Speech as an IDEAL.

As the article above points out....people these days are really missing the point about what really matters. 

Whether it’s on purpose or not, the issue of institutional racism rampant on college campuses is being overshadowed by arguments about the 1st Amendment.

And don’t get me wrong. The 1st Amendment is great! It allows me to write posts like this and participate in protests (at least when there’s not too many people of color involved because then we just become a “mob of thugs” or some shit).

But back to the two meanings of free speech.

So Freedom of Speech as a right.

It is protected by the government.

There are time, place, manner restrictions

ex. porn is shown on TV only after a certain time in the night

There are also content-based restrictions

ex. Yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre 

ex. Slander or use of fighting words

And then there’s Freedom of Speech as an ideal.

The idea that you should not silence others.

Being allowed to disagree with others

In a modern liberal democracy, who should say what to whom and how?

To morally criticize someone is not censorship

Yes, we are allowed to say what you want for the most part. But that does not exactly mean that you should. 

Don’t start telling jokes at a funeral.....it’s not a law but seriously....why would you?

Don’t yell the word “penis!” in the middle of a classroom...unless you want a bad grade.

Don’t call anyone the n-word. EVER. Just NO. 

When it comes to the recent college campus protests, which are moral criticisms of the institutional racism present on campuses and the administration’s lack of action against it, critics are denouncing their efforts because they are “infringing” on those racists’ right to Freedom of Speech. 

If someone has the right to turn black girls away from frat parties or write racist graffiti around campus or tell students that it’s OK to dress in whatever offensive Halloween costume you want.....then it is also OK to criticize these types of acts and call for the implementation of a hate crime policy on campuses. 

This is not an infringement of the 1st Amendment. It’s about calling to action against racial discrimination on campuses which is inherently as REALLY GOOD THING. 

Using the Freedom of Speech argument to defend your racist slurs is invalid and morally wrong. You would just be shifting the conversation from what truly matters....on purpose. 

The matters of institutional racism on campus and the importance of the lives of black bodies have simply been degraded and have instead been called matters of “hurt feelings” or “self-entitlement”. 

This is the kind of reaction people are having towards to protests that aim to establish the importance of the lives of people of color. 

In relation to the Keyword “Affect”, it is interesting to note that emotional expression is seen as a negative or irrational response. Critics use the feelings behind these protests as a way to bash the way college students these days are too coddled or immature or they even use it as a way to tone police speech and actions taken by the protesters. 

With all the Mizzou and Yale protest news, it is only expected that student organizations at different colleges will act in solidarity with the protesters.

It has even reached our campus here at Cornell.

If you don’t have a FB page, you won’t notice the outpouring of support and solidarity by people who are posting the following message onto their walls:

To the black students at Mizzou and Yale, we, students of color at (insert college institution here), stand with you in solidarity. To those who would threaten their sense of safety, we are watching. ‪#‎ConcernedStudent1950‬ ‪#‎InSolidarityWithMizzou‬

Recently, as the article above notes, there was an event on Facebook called the #ConcernedStudents2015 Protest that was supposed to occur on Ho Plaza tomorrow. However, the BSU here at Cornell called out the event and the organizer due to the “lack of people of color” involved. 

The event has since been cancelled but the commentary on whether the BSU was right to request that this event be called off is still continuing. 

This brings to question the validity of coalitions when it comes to fighting against institutionalized racism. There is a way to do things right and there is a way to do things very wrong.

No Name Woman

Historical Context:

was published over 30 years ago in 1975: Back then, Chinese-Americans didn’t have the same associations as they do today. Back then they were synonymous with laundry shops and Bruce Lee. (Bruce Lee is awesome)

It is a memoir of Maxine Hong Kingston and her experience growing up in the US to immigrant parents after her dad came to the US to work for money in order to feed the fam.

As mentioned in book, “Starvation Time”

Braving Out in the Face of Constraints: The Woman Warrior

by: Sangeeta Jhajharia and Mamta Beniwal

published by: International Journal of Social Science and Humanity

Maxine Hong Kingston is hailed as a feminist writer who has prose that unsettled both, “Chinese feminism” and “American sexism.”

Tone of the story so far: Blunt, Imaginative (ideas of what her Aunt had been doing with the man that impregnated her), saying what’s on her mind.

When she talks about “controlling the magnitude and direction of her attractiveness when it comes to guys she is interested in. (Quote on pg 12)

Question: Rereading this quote, what does her idea of how attraction works for boys of different races say about how she was raised….also using everything else in the chapter that we read. And then how does it relate to the idea that Maxine Hong Kingston, as a writer, unsettles the concepts of “Chinese feminism” and “American sexism”

Battling racial and social inequalities with her writing….making her a “word warrior”

Maxine HK relates herself to writers like Toni Morrison saying that her writing is so vivid because it so connected with community and the “tribe.”

In the story we read about the raid by the villagers on the protagonist family.

On page 13: “Adultery, perhaps only a mistake during good times, became a crime when the village needed food.

Question: How does Kingston’s portrayal of community aid her work in being more vivid? Is it relatable? or Can you somehow sympathize with the character’s feelings..however harsh? What does Kingston use in order to evoke these types of feelings in the reader?

Imagery: pg 12 (bottom), pg 8 (middle).

Also a sense of sentimentalism: pg 15

Things to think about:

When talking about the Aunt’s pregnancy and who it could have potentially been, “people checked birth charts in order to avoid incest” since “everybody has 8 million relatives”

Reverse-Ancestral worship

by not honoring her aunt’s death, her soul can never rest in the afterlife. must always beg for food and aid.

Halloween is upon us folks! And we have more to worry about apart from being the 10th other girl wearing a catwoman costume at the party or getting seriously scared at the local haunted house for kids that you said you went to with your little cousin who insisted but secretly wanted to go for yourself. 

We’re talking about culturally inappropriate and offensive costumes.

No you cannot use bronzer on your light skinned face in order to darken you enough to look more like Crazy Eyes from Orange is the New Black.

No you cannot wear a costumes titled “Buckskin Beauty” or “Indian Princess” that misrepresents Native American culture.

No you cannot wear a sexy nun outfit that completely disrespects an entire religion.

Seriously, I’m telling this to help you out. You don’t want to insult an entire people group because to be honest, you probably don’t even mean to. You think it’s “funny” or “sarcastic” or something. 

But it’s really not. It is offensive and really frustrating for certain groups of people feel as though their culture is being put on display and made fun of.

Earlier this October, the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and the Alpha Phi sorority chapters at UCLA decided to host a "Kanye-Western" themed party, which would have totally been fine if they had decided to dress up in Tims, leather pants and some sort of oversized black sweater with holes in it that mirrors his new Yeezy line or something. 

Unfortunately, they decided to dress in baggy clothes, gold chains and put padding in their pants in an effort to make their butts look bigger. Some partygoers even went as far as to wear soot on their faces. Once the party was discovered by some of the Black students at UCLA, protests ensued with good reason.

Blackface is NEVER a good idea for a costume. 

So before you buy that outfit at the Halloween store, really think about it. 

People honestly just need a little more empathy. 

So ladies and gentlemen, go out and brave the cold October air with your badass ninja couple outfits or your groovy 70's hippy costumes.

“I’d Rather be a Rebel Than A Slave”

Be honest here. When you read this sentence out loud to yourself with no context, what do you think about?

I think about slavery. Like....actual slavery. Like the “structural violence of treating the body of another as commodity” (The Mary Sue). 

Set to come out on the 23rd of October, the movie Suffragette, as told by Wikipedia, recounts that, “In the late 19th and early 20th century, the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal state in the quest for equal rights.” 

The trailer shown here is riveting and when I first watched it, it almost made me cry. For all I know, this movie is going to be amazing. But after seeing the promotional photoshoot pictures of the white actresses wearing shirts with the slogan, “I’d Rather be a Rebel Than A Slave”, I feel a bit apprehensive about it. 

In an article by the Huffington Post, in reference to the photoshoot pictures, it states, “So, this is how you do peak white feminism.” 

....So true.

To equate the white women’s struggle to be able to vote to slavery is just disrespectful. In the time of the women’s suffrage movement, black women were actively excluded from the fight for voting rights. However, women of color had much to do with the movement as well. The movie and the slogan is white-washing the suffrage movement in a way the media tends to do with historical events such as Stonewall.

The slogan that these women are using was one made a hundred years ago by a woman who probably didn’t care about what black women at the time wanted yet it was still used in the promotional campaign for this movie. You would think that perhaps, Hollywood could have done a greater job of including women of color and intersectional views of feminism in the movie and with the promotional campaign for it. But I guess that’s too much to ask for.

The idea of intersectionality in feminism is one that is not new. It is gaining popularity but there are still many feminists who don’t agree with or choose to realize it’s value. In Cathy Cohen’s essay “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” she is interested in creating a new form of politics which is inspired by black feminism and their concept of intersectionality which can aid in creating a system where the “non-normative and marginalized people are the base of progressive transformative coalition work.” 

“Empowerment comes from grassroots activism and not from mainstream politics.”

This article recently was shared on my FB newsfeed even though it it pretty old. I read it because if you were a 90s/ early 2000′s kid, then you had to have watched the hit show Sister Sister starring Tia and Tamera Mowry, two hilarious twin sisters that meet again after being separated since birth for years. 

The article sadly covers Tamera’s experience as a woman of color in an interracial marriage with a white man. Tia and Tamera Mowry are themselves interracial since their mother is black and their father is white. So for them, the idea of an interracial marriage is already normal and nothing to be ashamed of.

However, after people discovered that Tamera married a white man, she began to receive lots of hate mail and responses from people condemning her for marrying a white man and not staying true to her race. She talks about the comparisons people make to her sister Tia and her marriage to a black male which is seen as “doing it right”. 

I read an article about a year ago titled, “National Geographic Determined What Americans Will Look Like in 2050, and It's Beautiful.” It was a great read and it gave me hope that the idea of interracial families will be recognized as normal and “beautiful” in their own right in the future. 

I assume that celebrities usually have it easier when it comes to being victimized by racial discrimination because they have a vast amount of wealth. However, it does happen to them too. When I watched the video of Tamera crying to Opera about her experience, I could see how much pain she goes through and her confusion as to why such a loving relationship can be discredited by so many. 

This reminded me of Sui Sin Far’s writing about her character that was herself interracial and felt the need to choose a side. Does Tamera who herself is a product of an interracial marriage have to choose between black and white? It seems that there are a lot of people who think so. 

This is honestly so unfair. I can’t fully comprehend what it is like to be a product of an interracial marriage or what it is like to marry someone who is not of my race but I don’t think it has to be so black and white when it comes to “choosing a side.” 

           For the the first time in history, a black woman has won an Emmy award for Best Actress in a Drama. It was a long time coming. In this video she delivers a heartfelt and inspirational speech about empowerment for women of color. Her first line is a quote from Harriet Tubman, “In my mind I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women.” And she follows with the statement that in the present day, the “only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.” She credits her success and the success of women of color to the writers and directors who have given a new vision of what it mean to be beautiful and black and a leading actress. 

            Viola Davis’ Emmy is an example of how the definition of what it is to be black can change. This relates to Carmichael’s idea of Black Power. He stresses that the only way for black people to progress is by first redefining who they are and how they want to be represented. 

            Producers like Shonda Rimes are aiding in this redefining of women of color in the media and on tv. Viola Davis recognizes this and gives her and people like her the credit for helping actresses move across this “line” that at many times seems uncrossable. In redefining what it means to be beautiful or what it means to be black in today’s society, women of color can benefit from these opportunities and in turn achieve their rightful success. 

“We sell crack to our own, out the back of our homes.”

This is the first line of one of Talib Kweli’s most recognized songs called “Get By”. In the video above he uses this as an example of how the black community acknowledges this black-on-black crime. If you go on to listen to the rest of the lyrics of “Get By”, you can understand his reasoning. His song is about black and minority struggles within society and its institutions that continue to oppress them. 

He goes on to talk about how people use this idea of black-on-black crime and the All Lives Matter movement as an excuse for apathy when it comes to speaking out about race as well as a dismissal of Black Lives Matter. 

Talib Kweli came to Ithaca, NY on September 3 of this year and I had the pleasure of going to see him perform. What I was able to witness was more than a fabulous performance. I was able to listen to a talented artist use his position of power as a way of supporting Black Lives Matter. I heard the crowd yell in support of his words. Crowds full of young and old of different races. 

I also saw people leave angrily as he began to talk about race. I witnessed a white woman throw her shoe at Talib when he began to talk about race relations. Thankfully, she was escorted out. 

In his article on Black Power, Stokely Carmichael writes, “they do not want their peace disrupted or their business hurt” in reference to “respectable individuals” who don’t practice individual racism towards blacks yet continue to work within the institutions that perpetuate racist policies. This is related to Talib’s denouncement of apathetic people. 

As people cheered for Talib’s words, some left feeling insulted that their peace was disrupted. Some stayed quiet, refusing to clap in support but willing to stay because of their love of rap music, and some kept drinking slurps of “Gatorade” and stepping on my feet. Regardless, for me, Talib Kweli’s concert was a very educational experience. 

FETISHIZING RACE

(Try saying that 5 times fast)

In the video above, this sassy youtuber breaks it down about how incredibly annoying and disrespectful fetishizing race can be in real life. You’ve all heard it. 

“Oh man, that asian girl is so cute. I seriously will only date asians!” 

“Latina chicks are so spicy, I just wanna hear them call me ‘papi’!”

“Black girls are so wild! I’d tap that.”

And these examples are only limited to what I’ve heard on my college campus. The reality is that for some reason, there are people out there who will want to be in an intimate or sexual relationship with you simply because of what race you are. 

That is NOT okay.

What this does is sexualizes a group of people as another way of objectifying them. Sexual objects. People should not be seen as sexual objects. People should be seen as people. To fetishize a race is to dehumanize them.

And people try to use the argument that it’s simply a “preference”. There is a difference between having a preference and fetishizing a race. I for one prefer guys with darker hair and darker eyes. It makes me think that they look more mysterious. Where I got that idea, I don’t know but the point is that if I met a guy who was intellectual, charming, funny, and had the same values that I did, I could care less what color hair he has. He could be a red head or platinum blond or prematurely greying! 

But fetishizing a race is different. You aren’t looking at the person for who he or she is. You are simply interested in that person because of the color of their skin. And if they happen to have a cool personality then sweet! But honestly, you were just hoping that they’d wear a colorful kimono to great you at the door every time you came from work or some sh*t. 

This idea of fetishizing a race can come from the power of the media and the way it represents women of color especially. But women don’t have to force themselves to accept this kind of objectification. In the end, it’s up to you to accept the relationship that you’re in and if you are happy and your partner respects you then power to you! But if you feel like your partner is simply in it because he or she is fetishizing your race, then get out of that toxic relationship ASAP!

COALITIONS

Among social movements today, there comes about the idea of coalitions. With the #BlackLivesMatter movement, people all races and groups showed their solidarity for the movement by also following the hashtag and posting in support of it. On twitter the language has changed in terms of police brutality. People are posting about the idea that black and browns should unite to fight against the oppressor.