Friday, October 15, 2010

Black Image

Once I went to a party off campus and got a reality check as far as the difference in blacks that attend Rhodes, CBU, and Memphis. I saw a group of girls from CBU that made me close my eyes and shake my head from their attitudes to attire I was ashamed that this is how people really see blacks as portrayed in music videos. They were loud, rambunctious, and as far as their clothing was concerned, one girl might as well have not work clothes at all because from time to time on bus (it was a bus party) her dress turned from a dress to a shirt, and back to a dress. The sad part was that she expressed she didn’t care and her friends entertained that comment, in addition to an African guy that constantly ridiculed her and referred to her as “Buffy the Body”. It’s why the term “ratchet” is widely used to describe people (common among blacks) who have no home training. When you come to Rhodes there seems to be a different breed of blacks who, on most occasions, act as if their parents have taught them sense. It’s like they have the mindset, that in a predominately white college, they have to create the image that they are not like what the media portrays them to be. They can’t be that stereotypical black that others already have in their minds that they are. Even today blacks are still battling images from the slavery, such as the mammy figure, in addition to new images that they have brought upon themselves such as the video vixen, the gang banger, and ignorant dialect. There have been times where I’ve been approached by a white that told me, “what’s up my nigga?!” and “hey, girl hey”. I don’t even talk like that. I don’t even call my own race by that term. If this is what it has come to then African Americans still have a long way to go as far as cleaning up their image. Of course media like Tosh.O, South Park, Chelsey Lately, even the Boondocks, who ridicules its own race, will continue to do so as long as blacks self-destruct themselves by reinforcing the images seen in music videos and the news. Antowne Dobson’s news appearance made it no better. Blacks are always being portrayed as overly sexual and ghetto and it’s their own fault because they continue to point it out. Even while blacks fought the mammy image in Patio 6, yet Tyler Perry puts the image back into Hollywood.

1 comment:

  1. --"It’s like they have the mindset, that in a predominately white college, they have to create the image that they are not like what the media portrays them to be. They can’t be that stereotypical black that others already have in their minds that they are."
    I agree with that completely. I was the token black kid at my predominantly white high school, which is kind of sad because I'm half white, and it puts a lot of pressure on you to not portray any negative stereotypes and do really well in school. It's even harder when people say you don't "act black" because you don't portray those stereotypes, but then when you get accepted to a good school or get a scholarship or a good job offer, the same people say it's "just because you're black." Oh, and someone needs to put an end to Tyler Perry.

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