Tila Tequila, Flavor flav, New York (from I love New York), you may wonder why these people are even mentioned in the same sentence. While these seemingly unrelated public reality personas generally have nothing in common aside from their questionable rise to fame, they are however connected by their ability to elicit a collective emotional response from their respective racial groups. Chances are if you’re a person of color in America you’ve been mortified every time the embodiment of decade’s worth of stereotypes such as these characters appeared on TV, especially if you happened to be the lone representative of your group among non members bearing witness these disasters. VHI has made a fortune off of eliciting horror from black folk. Their formula for TV success goes a little something like this; (disparaging black protagonist x 10(insane libido) + 20 steps back for black folk = majority of VHI’s content. I’ll admit it, I watch some of this debauchery from time to time, but I wonder how much freedom as an individual do people of color enjoy? Are successes individual, while we share in the shame when members of our own group engage in shameful behavior?
I wonder why the gunman at Virginia Tech who just so happened to be Korean, forced many Asians students across the nation to feel weary and worry about possible retribution. I’m curious why so many Muslim Americans are now feeling scared about possible acts of violence committed against them because the gunman at Ft. Hood coincidently turned out to be Muslim. Why did Jewish organizations come out publicly and lambast Bernie Madoff after the discovery of his Ponzi scheme? Why was I a little shook up after discovering that the DC sniper was a black man? We’re all individuals right? Why all the collective mea culpas?
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I think that's a deep topic. At times I cant even watch BET or Vh1 because it has shows that potray my people in such a non flattering light. I cringe sometimes at Neffie or Frankie, and say to myself, thats why every other race has these stereotypes about us and have misconceptions about black women.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, I feel like when Barack became president it was like a collective mea culpa for the black race, to show that we're not all like the media portrays us. At the end of the day, I just try to remember who I am as an individual.
yea sadly I still think for many he's seen as a gross exception, a fluke. I think more balanced media images would be much more effective than a black man in the white house.
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