Racism on TV

[ezbakeoven]

*mods move if necessary, I thought this was the most appropriate forum but I may be wrong.


Why is it that racism is allowed on television only when it is directed towards white people. For example, Dave Chapelle on The Chapelle Show is frequently commenting on faults of white people and often referring to them by derrogatory names. He also shows white people as being inferior to African Americans, and are also the reason why African Americans are in the social position they are.

Another example is on the television show Mind of Mencia, in which the host is constantly discriminating against white people and glorifying the Mexican race.

I just think this is unfair and only when everyone treats eachother equally will all racism and bias be eliminated.

 

[Tanuki_23]

^Does it really offend you? Im white and usually just think its funny. Or does it offend you that you can't hear "nigger" jokes on TV? It seems that me that alot of racists just use unbalance as a reason to dislike one particular race. Ive heard the argument "You could never have a station called White Entertainment Channel (WET)." Who cares really, does it really affect you that much. Besides, one difference is that Chappelle makes fun of every1, same as Mencia.
Also, Mencia is a obviously a proud Hispanic, would you expect him to do anything else but "glorify the mexican race".

 

[michael]

you're right, it's unfar. boo-hoo.

of course, the 9458769407690858670959867 channels on tv are absolutely racism free.

8)

"You could never have a station called White Entertainment Channel (WET)."

yeah, i heard this crap the other day. 99% of tv is white, in case you didn't notice. immediately following that was "i never learned anything for white history month."

it's really hard to take anyone that thinks like that seriously.

 

[Khadijah]

Shit why they got black history month cuz the whole damn year is white history month! lol

So far im with the 2 responses, who cares, like its such a great trade off - "a large percentage of your people get to live in shitty neighborhoods and survive on welfare/lower paying jobs, apply to work at EOE jobs but still get turned down from your ghetto sounding names like Tyqueshia on job applications and never even get caled in for that interview, be represented on most of TV as ign'ant ass buffoons that are just camoflaged versions of the jesters back in the first part of the century --- BUUUT you DO get to make fun of white people on TV. hows it sound?" 8)

nah, really doe, if you pay attention to Chappelle he calls out everybody, icluding his own race. if you see him or his comedy style as racist you got it twisted.

And think back to chris rock -

the "black people vs niggas" skit

sayin shit like "what most white people dont realize, is we aint all like what you see on TV. theres plenty of us just workin to do our thang and we aint all stupid like that......theres black people, and then theres niggas. Best way to get rid of one of em? Throw a book at him!"

and shit like that.

so the conclusion is either way chill out, cuz TV aint really like you said it is, and whatcha gonna do if it was man, thats how it is, tough shit

 

[MaliceNwunderland]

Hmmmm.

Just because something isn't caterogrically black/latino/asian/ doesn't mean it's "white".

People tend to think anything not especially racially explicit as white. Whites in the US get treated like "blanks", the prototype, like we're no real race at all. I find that insulting.

There are many forms of entertaiment that are racially neutral, that's doesn't make them "white", it makes them nothing. Do we really need to inject race into EVERYTHING?

PS. Chapelle poked fun at ALL stereotypes and in a truly funny way. That hack Chris Rock should be fetchin Chapelle's pipe an slippers.

 

[Morrison's Lament]

Yeah, Chappelle never picked on whites especially, I'd say the stereotypes he used for his black characters had a lot more potential to be offensive.

Remember the thugged out gangster rapper that was secretary of defense in "what if Bush was black"? Remember Tyrone the crackhead? Remember his joke that if black people go reperations for slavery they'd spend it all on bling and fried chicken???

And you have to remember the context this is in. Just a few decades ago blacks were second class citizens in all aspects of daily life in America, the racism projected against them in language and culture was used not only to reflect but to SUSTAIN that injustice. Go back a couple of more decades and lynchings were legal. A few more and you could own black people like animals.

The language of that period is obviously going to have a lot more impact that some shit like "cracker" or "whitey" which are words with no power over anyone and no historical use in perpetuating and excusing atrocities.

Saying that blacks are dumb, lazy, shouldn't vote and just eat watermelon all the time is in no way comparable to saying white people can't dance. The former has a history of being used cruelly on a minority to an exclusionary effect, the latter could even be viewed as a psycho/social mechanism for dealing with fear and feelings of subjugation.

Apples and oranges? More like grenades and oranges.

--- G.

 

[DigitalDuality]

Excuse me for not buying into the liberal garbage that is "give everyone their special this and that". BET is crap. Ebony magazine is crap. Black history month is crap (and doesn't do a very good job IMO at that).

Why not integrate black history into white history? Why not have classes for african history that are equal elective alternatives to western history. Same thing for latin america, the middle east, or the east itself. Some how we have black history month, yet still end up teaching black americans that they're history started with slavery. Yay! What inspiration and pride in your race's and culture's accomplishments that must instill. 8(

The lines of segregation under the cause of "equality" is fucking bogus. It's part of the racism problem. It pisses off whites, and it further self-segregates blacks.

And as to racial jokes. I love them. From Chappelle, or most anyone else. We all to some degree fit a stereotype, and we all to some degree shine through in our individuality. Why not sit back and laugh at our (or your) stereotypes? If we can't do simple things like laugh at each other, and laugh at ourselves.. how the hell are we supoosed to take care of much more serious issues?

I'm really tired too of a race being marketed as "cool" as well and my race being marketed as "corny". Fuck that.

 

[cravNbeets]

Some how we have black history month, yet still end up teaching black americans that they're history started with slavery. Yay! What inspiration and pride in your race's and culture's accomplishments that must instill. 8(

if learning that fact brings shame or discouragement to any culture it sure as hell shouldnt be african americans8)

Why not sit back and laugh at our (or your) stereotypes? If we can't do simple things like laugh at each other, and laugh at ourselves.. how the hell are we supoosed to take care of much more serious issues?

I'm really tired too of a race being marketed as "cool" as well and my race being marketed as "corny". Fuck that.

why "fuck that"? why not sit your corny ass back and laugh?

 

[Tanuki_23]

Saying that blacks are dumb, lazy, shouldn't vote and just eat watermelon all the time is in no way comparable to saying white people can't dance. The former has a history of being used cruelly on a minority to an exclusionary effect, the latter could even be viewed as a psycho/social mechanism for dealing with fear and feelings of subjugation.

Apples and oranges? More like grenades and oranges.

 

[BA]

Welcome to the double standard. Nothing about "black only" indicates equality. TV, radio, magazine, month, whatever. I think a "culture month" or a culturally diverse festival would be more appropriate, and if you want to individually celebrate your ethnicity with your friends and family - so be it. There are so many cultures to be represented, why pick only a few? I am outraged there is no Finnish month to honor my heritage!!

Deja vu of a thread I started a looong time ago! :D

 

[fungus44]

I love the Chappelle Show! This WASPoid honkey finds it a thrill, and the sharpest satire on TV. This week the "rejects" were shown. My favourite was the Gay KKK and The Playahataz Science Fair. And it was followed by the Daily Show with Seymour Hersh as the guest.

Best hour of TV one could find.

Satire rests on stereotypes and caricatures. It can be regressive when it's propping up the status quo steeotypes, but when it messes with the metaprogram of white supremacy or other forms of oppression and prejudice, it's freaking radical!

Apples and oranges? More like grenades and oranges.

Word up.

We all to some degree fit a stereotype, and we all to some degree shine through in our individuality. Why not sit back and laugh at our (or your) stereotypes? If we can't do simple things like laugh at each other, and laugh at ourselves.. how the hell are we supoosed to take care of much more serious issues?

Ditto.

 

[youarewhatyouis]

...

 

[fungus44]

WET White Entertainment Television= CMT Country Music Televison

I love it! Not the station, but the acronym.

 

[Khadijah]

And you have to remember the context this is in. Just a few decades ago blacks were second class citizens in all aspects of daily life in America, the racism projected against them in language and culture was used not only to reflect but to SUSTAIN that injustice. Go back a couple of more decades and lynchings were legal. A few more and you could own black people like animals.

The language of that period is obviously going to have a lot more impact that some shit like "cracker" or "whitey" which are words with no power over anyone and no historical use in perpetuating and excusing atrocities.

Saying that blacks are dumb, lazy, shouldn't vote and just eat watermelon all the time is in no way comparable to saying white people can't dance. The former has a history of being used cruelly on a minority to an exclusionary effect, the latter could even be viewed as a psycho/social mechanism for dealing with fear and feelings of subjugation.

Apples and oranges? More like grenades and oranges.

--- G.

thats word.

Well if you wanna talk about racism on TV in another light,

ever notice how a big percentage of the most famous black movie stars and the ones who gained the most acceptance in the mainstream media are very light skinned. i aint saying its because of that but i find it interesting. halle berry anybody? tyra banks. will smith. ice cube. vin diesel (even tho he dont own up to any race) if you pay attention you start to notice that. now people like omar epps, mekhi phifer, etc, what do you see...they all are very popular - in their genre. "black" movies.

you dont see alot of dark black people in very high positions in the media. halle berry is half white, so she really aint even got black features. by that i mean if you took her skin and made it lighter so it was 'white' her face woudl not look like an albino black person.

there aint alot of blacks who look strongly african who have got really popular as actors in movies, tv, etc.

i aint taking a position or offering any reasons why i think it is but its something i noticed thats interesting.

its fucked up, because that mentality is even in the black community too that i seen. i got a friend who was talking about her friend that i didnt know.both of em are black and my friend was sayin "yea you know what i cant believe it, she dont even straighten her hair or nothin, she just leave it all nappy like that. fix yourself girl!" like the natural characteristics of herself were a flaw. she straightens her hair and to alot of black people their own hair is considered nasty or a problem almost like somebody who got really nasty crooked teeth that they dont brush needs to "fix" their teeth. i also seen people look down on other blacks who are dark skinned and people talk about "passing" alot. dont get me wrong theres a equal balance of black pride mufuckas but theres alot of people out there who to them, the straighter your hair, the lighter your skin, the better you are.

that was a little side topic but all im saying is i woudl be mad suprised to see a dark as hell very broad nose african looking actor in mainstream hollywood on the a-list, getting more than bit parts or typecast parts or playing roles in hood movies. like someone at julia roberts level, etc.

even denzel washington looks liek the dad on Good Times and he looks like bill cosby.

i dont know for sure its just shit crossing thru my mind that im wonderin about. but its almost like theyre scared to show REAL black people, who aint either in the hood acting ghetto or just blend right into the rest of everybody like the principal in How High. its like they either gotta show them as stupid, or rael smart and a part of being smart is losing any differences and conforming to the way that everybody in a office acts. and they always show the intelligent black people on TV liek teachers, lawyers, etc, as light skinned.

liek you cant be ghetto and smart, like you cant be educated and still be "black"...theres a difference between black and ghetto culture and the 2 are close together but not the same thing. they share alot but still. people criticize blacks who call out other blacks who act like most well off white people, saying "oh what, just because they aint acting all hood and crazy you gonna say they aint black no more" and shit like that. but i think there still is a such thing as a uncle tom just that nobody knows where the line is....

Either way i hate the way people of all kinds get showed on TV. if everybody who sticks within their own race mostly, quit watching TV and goin to the movies and just went out and met people, real people, whatever race, everybody would be like... "Oh....so you aint like that at all! what the fuck?"

i think "they", whoever that is, uses the media as tools to keep blacks white and other races stereotyping against each other, the friction between races is good for them, it keeps us from all banding together and working for a real change in this country. if tribes are fighting among each other they cant be strong when a new enemy comes in, to put it in a metaphor. and were all just different tribes here in the US.

we got black vs white to focus on when really it should be rich vs poor cuz anybody who been thru the struggle can identify with that, any race. but if the underclass stays segregated by race then we cant do shit to get further on in life, so continues the welfare system, the endless cycle of in and out of jail, all weapons. people joke about "The man is bringin me down" cuz it is overused, i agree. but the concept aint all a joke peeps.

the people on top in this country are runnin shit and whether or not it seems like it on the surface TV and the media and etc is just distractions against the things goin on that are really important. take away your opponents attention and you win the fight (says the jeet kune do), there you go.
thats all this shit is. the media is another distraction and another tool that when used by the wrong people can further bad feelings and bad stereotypes and false truths between people even while its claiming to do the opposite.

 

[MaliceNwunderland]

^^^Samuel Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Danny Glover, Bernie Mac. = all outer space colored and rich and famous.

I do agree with your notion that the media really does serve to keep the races distanced rather than closer together.

 

[WH15K3Y_50UR_PLZ]

Ive heard the argument "You could never have a station called White Entertainment Channel (WET)."

It's not like there aren't plenty of white people on TV, its just that whites are typically discouraged from thinking about themselves as an ethnic group and promoting their group interests, while minorities are encouraged to do so. That's the double standard.

 

[DigitalDuality]

If i was to turn on my TV right now... and flip through the channels and count the ration of blacks and whites i saw, and knew nothing about american culture, i would swear that blacks make up a much larger percentage of our society than what they do. I'm not saying there isn't inequality that needs to be fixed, but i really tire of this "every day is white history day, every channel is a white channel".

I don't see many new exclusive all white shows anymore, i don't. But the push for all black shows has been growing strong. This self segregation and the white apathy that supports it, is making the race problem worse IMO, not better.

And if you want to get right down to it about who's really shafted on our television, it's not blacks, but hispanics. They equal (or are just above) the percentage of blacks in this country, and occassionally i might see a hispanic actor, occassionally i see a hispanic stand up comedian or sports announcer or news reporter. And oh yeah, can't forget the George Lopez show. But that's about it.

I'm kinda torn though when it comes to stations like... Telemundo vs BET. BET is defining itself purely on skin color and a self segregationalist take on it's culture. "What it means to be a strong black woman in today's world". Rather than "a strong woman" or furthermore "a strong person".

Telemundo caters to a language, nationality, and racial difference. Somehow in my mind b/c of the language barrier, telemundo seems more ok. But if it were a purely english channel... i'd probably feel the same way about it as i do BET.

The thing i find so absolutely laughable in this country is that the white/black tension gets raised so highly...everything else gets ignored. Rarely do i see an Arab on tv unless it's a cop show and they're hunting terrorists or it's playing up the stereotype of someone being a cab driver. Almost every asian i see on tv either has something to do with martial arts or is super smart.

 

[Khadijah]

The reason they say 'a strong black woman in todays world" or whatever is because thats your pride right there.

i aint saying its right or wrong or one or the other but think about it. TV has almost turned being black into a fad. think of it like this.

you sing slave spirituals, that turns into blues. mostly all black. no one can argue that the roots are in black culture even though there was some white people included in the movement. it gradually spins off into shit with the electric guitar and give birth to rock. rock now is so far removed from its roots in rhythm and blues and no doubt its preformed and created by almost all-white people now adays.

so you can see it as whites "stole" that.

theres a history of all that thru the past few decades, now you get to hip hop. starts in the ghetto and for awhile until DMC at the beginning and NWA busted out it was stayin in the hood. it was a unique form of music specific to that lifestyle, the FUBU of music.
then befoer you know it suburban and rich kids were rockin the t-shirts when dre and snoop came out. it became a hot trend just as sellable as britney spears, the new thing, sweeping it all by storm.

take that and go forward to today, where people aint just wearin the t-shirts and listening to it but full on frontin, rich sheltered kids with endless money driving their pimped out litl mazdas and wearing head to toe ecko or rocawear and covered with bling. walkin around like YO DAWG. lol. when they never been to the hood or spent time there. when they are the type of people who would be like, oh my god, that place is so shitty, when i drove through there was crackheads walking after my car tryina reach in the window and ask for money when i stopped at a light, thats fuckin nasty, dont ever go there its scary.

so you have a SLAP in the FACE there to people who created and lived hip hop because music is one thing, its free domain, who says you cant like what you want, but to front on the lifestyle is very disrespectful.

what im getting at is, even tho i dont know how i see it cuz its a real complex issue, is that if you ask alot of black people they feel like whites and the rulers of the media "stole" things from them, stole their music, stole their clothing style, stole their language and slang, etc. without paying respect to where it came from or even knowing really.
to some black people "white people" is their verson of "them" or "they", whites and the man are the same thing. well "white people" come in with developers and take away their homes and build luxury condos that no one can afford on them. when the only home you ever known is a shitty ass apartment in the pj's and they kick you out and knock it down, even taking that small piece of shit away from you and say, wel, see ya, fiind somewhere else, if ya cant tough shit, thats some shit right there. then you walk by everyday and see hundreds of rich business professionals walking in and out of the luxury high rise where your home used to be at.

i aint tryina speak for blacks dont get me wrong but what im saying is from what i heard and seen and im talking abuot my observation of it. some blacks feel like the white people take everything from them, as soon as they start to have fun, as soon as they start something new, the white people steal it and adopt it and alter it to fit themselves and no matter what they do they cant have something that is uniquely theirs.

BUT no matter what, the one thing they got is being black, white people cant steal that. so i think there is part of the reason for the "im a black female" not "im a female" thing.

 

[DigitalDuality]

The pride in the black race... if done with whites.. would be seen as "scary".

When pride in ones country is taken to THAT level, you normally looking at the difference between patriotism and naitonalism. It's a bit too much. And i think it's negative.

As long as you define yourself by your race first and foremost..rather than something more uniting with your fellow man (or countryman) be it.. Human, nationality, etc. don't piss and moan when you're not included and don't have equal chances. You're the one that put that level of seperation there.

I just find it amazing that blacks in the 60s fought so very hard to end segregation, and now it's a cultural staple. Go to any suburban school in america at lunch time. Each school has a "black table(s)". They don't sit with whites.. and whites don't sit with them..for the most part.

When you go to Britain, Poland, Germany, France, Australia, etc, etc, etc.. you don't see blacks there refering to themselves as "African British" or "African Polish" or "African French" just because they have black skin. You think these nations (or at least some) never oppressed blacks?

And great point is lets look at a bluelighter here. Poste aka Beagle. He consistently reminds people on this board about how he's black. Race comes up in every conversation he gets in .. on the board anyways, and it gets kicked up in his face almost everytime. Mainly it's because most of us could give a rats ass and you just get sick of hearing it.

 

[Morrison's Lament]

When you go to Britain, Poland, Germany, France, Australia, etc, etc, etc.. you don't see blacks there refering to themselves as "African British" or "African Polish" or "African French" just because they have black skin. You think these nations (or at least some) never oppressed blacks?

In Britain they are often called Afro-Caribbean, not even a mention of the fact that they are second or third generation Brits. In Germany they are just called Africans, and my black friends refer to white people as "Germans" and blacks as "Africans."

--- G.