Since I couldn't think of anything to write I thought it would be appropriate to share an essay I wrote for an english class last year:
In high school I would get real mad when I would watch African American TV shows. It wasn’t because I felt offended, but because I thought they were horrible. The production value of the shows were not up to par with the white shows and I would wonder why the writing wasn’t creative or funny. I believe that on the mission to be both morally politically and correct black people we are limiting our artistic expression.
A few days ago I was having a conversation with one of my friends about Denzel Washington winning an Oscar for “Training Day”. She presumed to use the same tired argument, “Black people only get rewarded when they are seen in a negative light.” In actuality, Sidney Poiter, Jennifer Hudson, and Morgan Freeman have all won Oscars for playing characters that were not negative and degrading in any way. I also don’t recall any angry uprising from white people when Kim Basinger won an Oscar for playing a prostitute. It is becoming more apparent to me each day, as consumers we digress artistically because our reception of art is at the expense of what we have not been exposed to.
I fully became aware of this during my senior year when my African American studies teacher, Mr.Greyson bought in a magazine cover that Beyonce did for L’Officiel. In the picture she had wore traditional African clothing and her face was painted black, but her body was still her normal tone. My teacher then went into a whole lecture on how white people would make fun of African Americans by painting only their face black and acting in an ignorant way. He then stated how she was degrading herself and all other black people by agreeing paint her face black for the photo shoot. I was completely thrown off, because I didn’t find anything about the photo offensive, because black skin is not offensive by itself. Beyonce’s face was not painted black while eating a banana, fried chicken, or talking like an illiterate slave. She simply painted her face black, because in the actual interview that no one dared to read, she was inspired by an African man named Fela Kuti. This was her way of paying homage to man that she admired and she could’ve easily just stopped at the clothing, but she decided to go full on. The true intent of black face was not to reduce black people to a skin tone, but to reduce them to subhuman creatures. My biggest problem with what my teacher was saying was not that he was talking negatively about my favorite singer but what his rant said about our tolerance as consumers.
After Mr.Greyson finished speaking, he let the class discuss our opinions and I was baffled at how many people had claimed that they thought the pictures were offensive when in actuality the majority of them had just learned about what Mr.Greyson had just discussed. After a while of contemplating, I raised my hand and asked, “Are you really offended or are you offended, because you think you should be offended?” The whole class went quiet and I never really got a solid answer.
I feel that in order to for us to see a change in the way we are represented in the media we must stop thinking as a self-righteous collective and start thinking as informed and cultured individuals. I am fully aware that it is important for blacks to be portrayed in a positive light, but when we reduce everything to “offensive” and “non offensive” we are leaving no room for creativity. Some of the most significant roles for black actors have been playing people who were not so so nice and some of the most reflective albums had language that was strongly suited. But, if we continue to easily get offended because we believe we are supposed to, then we cannot be mad at the two dimensional characters and the weak repetitive plots. We want our opinions to be taken serious, but most of our anger is based off what it means to be “black”, “real”, or “offensive”. I have experienced racism firsthand and as I age I’m learning that offensive is not just about image, but it is also about attitude and action.
All year in Mr.Greyson’s class we learned to think critically about what we see in the media, but at the same time we were told how to perceive every scenario that is non existent and relevant to society.
