The other day in class when Professor Dunning asked us the question "What does our race protect us from?" I really got to thinking. All this talk of race, racial identity, miscegenation, and mixed race are now constantly whirling throughout my head. I no longer see it as okay to classify people by their race or to stereotype someone because of the color of their skin. I can not allow myself to assume that all black people like rap, that all Asian kids are good at math, or that all people of Latin American descent must be immigrants. I no longer let myself see this world defined along racial lines because it is clearly no longer acceptable. The ideas of our generation are now leading with the fact that race is not biological. It is a social construction created by generations of prejudice and racism embedded deep into our social structure.
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So back to the question, what does race protect us from?
Race seems to protect us from the need to confront our differences as a result of the barriers built up by race. If race is no longer an issue, then centuries of hatred, abuse, and war no longer have any basis or foundation. The arguments of superiority of any such race and the minority of any such race will no longer be valid. Any ideas of racial identity no longer need to be confronted or pursued because race will no longer define who we are. How we refer to one another will change from racial terms and phenotypic markings of race to those terms that actually define that of who we are as people.
But the truth of the matter is that race may always be. As much as we want it to change, we may never live to see that. For as many years as race defined all we did and who we were, it may take twice as long to change the minds of the people of the world. At present day, race is still very much a factor in a lot of what we do. It may have fade for discriminatory purposes as to avoid conflict, but it did not disappear to make the world better. People everywhere still base their lives on racial terms and barriers. For hundreds of years, race forced millions into slavery, others to persecution, and even millions more to their deaths. It took many wars, years of fighting, and movements of many to bring equality among races. Can we really change the thought process of the world with this concept of a "social" race.
Race divides, but race is also beautiful. Our skin creates a world of diversified colors and ethnicities that make our world exciting and imaginative. Our different cultures are divided by race, but not bound by it. We have traditions and beliefs, and they might tend to be racial, but the truth of the matter is, not every black person celebrates Kwanzaa and not every Hispanic speaks Spanish. Race is beautiful when racial prejudice does not exist. But is that even possible?
I know that all of this might seem scattered brained and you might not agree with it. But what I have learned is that race might just be a social construct, but it is what is holding us together. I do believe that we must confront the ideas of racism and prejudice with the idea that race is not biological. And with that we can start to break down those walls dividing us.
To really make this happen, we must constantly be fighting against and correcting racial stereotypes and embedding into future generations the concepts that we ourselves have retained each day in Professor Dunning's class. We will face deliberation and constant struggle, but for this to really happen, we have to know, believe, and live out a life that breaks down race and allows us to be uniquely our own, but also collectively humans.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
The Importance of Returning to One’s Roots: An Illusory Concept- Sankalp Malhotra
I was reading the Washington Post a few days ago and I came across an article entitled, “To Africa, for Culture and Credits.” The sub-heading read, “U.S. born students are going back to their family roots.” Essentially, first generation Nigerian immigrant parents are sending their American-born children to study in International schools in Nigeria in order to teach them about their origins, to build their connection to the African continent as a whole, and to give them “some perspective about life in America.” A central idea emphasized by the article is that many of the children complain of being teased in their American schools because of their differences in appearance, accent, and overall culture. The more I thought about this article, the more it began to agitate me. Not only was the concept of returning to one’s “roots” to find answers about the fundamental question “Who am I?” troublesome, but also that thinking about the article brought me back to Aimee Liu’s “masterpiece,” Face- a book that was so perplexing that I vowed I would never seriously dwell on it again.
Nevertheless, the novel seems to indicate, as the article does, that those brought up in multi-racial, multi-cultural houses can find the answers to their qualms regarding self-identity by returning to where they are from. The “where” is different for everyone, but the line of self-doubt and the journeys are portrayed as the same. For the Nigerian children, who have been largely motivated by their parents’ desires, the journey leads to Africa. For Maibelle, the protagonist of Liu’s novel, the journey pushes her to Chinatown in New York. Although the stories of Maibelle and the African children are different (Maibelle was a mixed race individual brought up in Chinatown, while the Nigerian kids growing up in a bicultural environment, have only been raised hearing about Nigeria from their parents), the societal narrative of the search for identity ties both of the set of circumstances together.
I firmly believe after reading Liu’s novel and the Washington Post article that the idea that it is necessary to “return to one’s roots to define one’s identity” and “find answers” has been overplayed by society; it is largely exaggerated and primarily an illusory construct, similar to race. Maibelle did not learn to deal with her many issues (including her identity crisis) by going to Chinatown. Many other integral events took place by which she was able to reconcile her internal and external “affairs” (no pun intended). She was pushed towards Chinatown to find answers by people around her, including Tommy “Tai” Wah, just as the Nigerian kids are being told by their parents to find answers in Nigeria. I do not believe that the Nigerian children will find answers regarding their identity, and more importantly the answers to the conundrum of how others view them, by flying all the way to Africa- my personal experiences substantiate this contention.
Yet, Liu’s novel, an archetypal representation of racially-motivated books that America enjoys reading, places Maibelle’s trip to Chinatown at the center of the plot development. It takes the Jade Maiden half of the book to decide whether or not she has the courage to return to the place of her origin- and this is precisely the journey that readers want her to take. There is a constant feeling for the reader that Maibelle may find the cure for her numerous problems (which initially seem like quirks) in Chinatown. The book’s preview on the cover alludes to this type of resolution as well: “Lured by inner needs…[Maibelle] returns to the community and family she left behind…to strip away layers of illusion to expose the bare bones of her life-stark, dangerous, and shimmering with painful truth.” The preview makes it seem as if the author desires for the reader to see the connection between Maibelle’s journey to Chinatown and her ability at the end of the novel to find peace with herself and the circumstances she continues to face.
The facts of the novel, however, paint a very different picture. Mai Mai is pushed into Chinatown by Tai who states in his first letter that Uncle Li, a man who could not be illustrated as any more susceptible to the notion of returning home, always thought she would have to return (page 1). The fact that her decision to go back to Chinatown is influenced by others shows how prevalent this idea of returning to one’s origins (to find answers) truly is. Nevertheless, Maibelle does not sort out her crises by visiting Chinatown, but rather through a very different series of events. For instance, her father’s confessions near the time of his death help her to understand not only why she was brought up in Chinatown, but also the many demons that have plagued her enigmatic, hermit-like dad.
The “climax” of the book which comes with the revelation of Maibelle’s rape that occurred in Chinatown also has very little to do with her trip back to her old home. She doesn’t remember this memory that she buried deep inside of her by re-visiting Chinatown, but she is pushed into re-living it by her sister. Neither she nor her sister even mentions her decision to return to Chinatown with Tai (p. 313-317). Though the inhibitions that she had with going to Chinatown again are explained by her trauma from the rape, she does not find her “answers” or “healing” by going back. It can be argued that her developed love for Tommy is the reason she is able to let go of her past suffering.
After all, her inability to let go of Johnny, an obstacle that she faced for her entire life, also had no connection with returning to Chinatown. Upon his death, her notion of an attractive man was shaped by her image of Johnny. She purposefully slept with men with blonde hair and blue eyes. She let go of men like Jed Miffet and other previous lovers who fit the profile of Johnny when she met Tai and realized that he is not a bad person. She also begins to see that Tai is nothing like the Chinese men who raped her, though she initially compares his looks with Winston Chang, a fellow-conspirator of the Dragonflies. Although Tai and Maibelle’s actual meeting is linked to Chinatown, their most intimate moments of connection occurred outside of the context of Chinatown (for instance, in Tai’s house making Chinese food).
In essence, Maibelle’s trip to Chinatown has nothing to do with her growth as a person in the novel. The sensationalist author has jumped onto the bandwagon of the societal narrative that says if a person returns to the place of her “origin,” she will find answers about her identity and her most serious crises. There is, however, a fundamental difference between causality and parallelism. Maibelle’s ability to finally deal with her crises was not caused by her trip to Chinatown; rather, her trip to Chinatown occurred in same time-frame as the point in the book where she began to sort out her internal conflicts.
Through my own “soul searching,” which has more effectively occurred within the confines of my dorm room rather than in India (the place of my origin), I have come to believe that one must live in the present, and define oneself in the context of the present; race, ethnic identity, origin are not important in the “big picture.” Society has made these ideas important and one manifestation of this idea (other than Aimee Liu’s book) is the Washington Post article about the Nigerian children. Their situation correlates directly to the situation I faced when I first came to the U.S. as a first generation immigrant. I was also teased by my American classmates and my parents also gave me mixed messages as to how to deal with the “culture shock.”
They said I should continue to take my Indian food to school (despite the fact that kids made fun of what I ate) and be proud of who I was. Simultaneously, they also asserted that I should learn to adapt to my new surroundings, so they bought me the latest brands of clothing that kids were wearing in school. It seemed to me (at that time) that they were asking me to become American by adapting and also remain Indian by resisting change. As a fourth grader, I was perplexed. Because I confessed my confusion to my parents, they decided to take me to India.
I was born in New Delhi, India but when I was just two years old, my father got a job in Papua New Guinea and we immediately moved abroad. My younger brother was born on that tropical island, and seven years later, we decided to move to the United States. Both sides of my extended family-grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins- still live in India. Just within a year of living in the U.S., my family decided to visit India for a month.
I suppose my parents thought I would come to certain life-changing, self-defining conclusions in India that would help answer my questions about my identity. Unfortunately, there is not much one can gain by going from house to house of relatives for one month; wrapped up in this constancy, I found myself not only seeing the absurdity of the “family traditions” but I also found that I felt no connection to my homeland by hearing my relatives talk about how unhealthy my brother and me were: “You don’t feed them enough,” they said to my parents. “How can you live in America and have kids that look as malnourished as Ethiopians?”
In the end, I returned to America with the simple conclusion: As Henry says in Face, “life is too short to have an identity crisis.” I began to believe that. I knew that I had to live in the present, not in the world of my origins. I identified my problem of not fitting into American society and began to fully adapt to my new surroundings. For instance, I began by eating food from the school cafeterias. I remedied my problems myself having seen the extent to which my parents’ attempted remedy had failed. Going to visit the land of my origin may have given me a concrete representation of my nationality, but it did not fix my problem of fitting in within American Society, just as Maibelle’s trip into Chinatown didn’t “fix” her major problems. This is also why I believe that the Nigerian children will never find the answers they seek in Africa. Their issues with adapting to American society can never be fixed by returning to the place of their origin, though their parents and the rest of society believe this to be true. As Carrie Latet said, “junk mail, junk food, our society is full of junk living, period.” It seems that society continues to perpetuate junk ideas as well.
The Washington Post Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092200582.html?hpid=topnews
Nevertheless, the novel seems to indicate, as the article does, that those brought up in multi-racial, multi-cultural houses can find the answers to their qualms regarding self-identity by returning to where they are from. The “where” is different for everyone, but the line of self-doubt and the journeys are portrayed as the same. For the Nigerian children, who have been largely motivated by their parents’ desires, the journey leads to Africa. For Maibelle, the protagonist of Liu’s novel, the journey pushes her to Chinatown in New York. Although the stories of Maibelle and the African children are different (Maibelle was a mixed race individual brought up in Chinatown, while the Nigerian kids growing up in a bicultural environment, have only been raised hearing about Nigeria from their parents), the societal narrative of the search for identity ties both of the set of circumstances together.
I firmly believe after reading Liu’s novel and the Washington Post article that the idea that it is necessary to “return to one’s roots to define one’s identity” and “find answers” has been overplayed by society; it is largely exaggerated and primarily an illusory construct, similar to race. Maibelle did not learn to deal with her many issues (including her identity crisis) by going to Chinatown. Many other integral events took place by which she was able to reconcile her internal and external “affairs” (no pun intended). She was pushed towards Chinatown to find answers by people around her, including Tommy “Tai” Wah, just as the Nigerian kids are being told by their parents to find answers in Nigeria. I do not believe that the Nigerian children will find answers regarding their identity, and more importantly the answers to the conundrum of how others view them, by flying all the way to Africa- my personal experiences substantiate this contention.
Yet, Liu’s novel, an archetypal representation of racially-motivated books that America enjoys reading, places Maibelle’s trip to Chinatown at the center of the plot development. It takes the Jade Maiden half of the book to decide whether or not she has the courage to return to the place of her origin- and this is precisely the journey that readers want her to take. There is a constant feeling for the reader that Maibelle may find the cure for her numerous problems (which initially seem like quirks) in Chinatown. The book’s preview on the cover alludes to this type of resolution as well: “Lured by inner needs…[Maibelle] returns to the community and family she left behind…to strip away layers of illusion to expose the bare bones of her life-stark, dangerous, and shimmering with painful truth.” The preview makes it seem as if the author desires for the reader to see the connection between Maibelle’s journey to Chinatown and her ability at the end of the novel to find peace with herself and the circumstances she continues to face.
The facts of the novel, however, paint a very different picture. Mai Mai is pushed into Chinatown by Tai who states in his first letter that Uncle Li, a man who could not be illustrated as any more susceptible to the notion of returning home, always thought she would have to return (page 1). The fact that her decision to go back to Chinatown is influenced by others shows how prevalent this idea of returning to one’s origins (to find answers) truly is. Nevertheless, Maibelle does not sort out her crises by visiting Chinatown, but rather through a very different series of events. For instance, her father’s confessions near the time of his death help her to understand not only why she was brought up in Chinatown, but also the many demons that have plagued her enigmatic, hermit-like dad.
The “climax” of the book which comes with the revelation of Maibelle’s rape that occurred in Chinatown also has very little to do with her trip back to her old home. She doesn’t remember this memory that she buried deep inside of her by re-visiting Chinatown, but she is pushed into re-living it by her sister. Neither she nor her sister even mentions her decision to return to Chinatown with Tai (p. 313-317). Though the inhibitions that she had with going to Chinatown again are explained by her trauma from the rape, she does not find her “answers” or “healing” by going back. It can be argued that her developed love for Tommy is the reason she is able to let go of her past suffering.
After all, her inability to let go of Johnny, an obstacle that she faced for her entire life, also had no connection with returning to Chinatown. Upon his death, her notion of an attractive man was shaped by her image of Johnny. She purposefully slept with men with blonde hair and blue eyes. She let go of men like Jed Miffet and other previous lovers who fit the profile of Johnny when she met Tai and realized that he is not a bad person. She also begins to see that Tai is nothing like the Chinese men who raped her, though she initially compares his looks with Winston Chang, a fellow-conspirator of the Dragonflies. Although Tai and Maibelle’s actual meeting is linked to Chinatown, their most intimate moments of connection occurred outside of the context of Chinatown (for instance, in Tai’s house making Chinese food).
In essence, Maibelle’s trip to Chinatown has nothing to do with her growth as a person in the novel. The sensationalist author has jumped onto the bandwagon of the societal narrative that says if a person returns to the place of her “origin,” she will find answers about her identity and her most serious crises. There is, however, a fundamental difference between causality and parallelism. Maibelle’s ability to finally deal with her crises was not caused by her trip to Chinatown; rather, her trip to Chinatown occurred in same time-frame as the point in the book where she began to sort out her internal conflicts.
Through my own “soul searching,” which has more effectively occurred within the confines of my dorm room rather than in India (the place of my origin), I have come to believe that one must live in the present, and define oneself in the context of the present; race, ethnic identity, origin are not important in the “big picture.” Society has made these ideas important and one manifestation of this idea (other than Aimee Liu’s book) is the Washington Post article about the Nigerian children. Their situation correlates directly to the situation I faced when I first came to the U.S. as a first generation immigrant. I was also teased by my American classmates and my parents also gave me mixed messages as to how to deal with the “culture shock.”
They said I should continue to take my Indian food to school (despite the fact that kids made fun of what I ate) and be proud of who I was. Simultaneously, they also asserted that I should learn to adapt to my new surroundings, so they bought me the latest brands of clothing that kids were wearing in school. It seemed to me (at that time) that they were asking me to become American by adapting and also remain Indian by resisting change. As a fourth grader, I was perplexed. Because I confessed my confusion to my parents, they decided to take me to India.
I was born in New Delhi, India but when I was just two years old, my father got a job in Papua New Guinea and we immediately moved abroad. My younger brother was born on that tropical island, and seven years later, we decided to move to the United States. Both sides of my extended family-grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins- still live in India. Just within a year of living in the U.S., my family decided to visit India for a month.
I suppose my parents thought I would come to certain life-changing, self-defining conclusions in India that would help answer my questions about my identity. Unfortunately, there is not much one can gain by going from house to house of relatives for one month; wrapped up in this constancy, I found myself not only seeing the absurdity of the “family traditions” but I also found that I felt no connection to my homeland by hearing my relatives talk about how unhealthy my brother and me were: “You don’t feed them enough,” they said to my parents. “How can you live in America and have kids that look as malnourished as Ethiopians?”
In the end, I returned to America with the simple conclusion: As Henry says in Face, “life is too short to have an identity crisis.” I began to believe that. I knew that I had to live in the present, not in the world of my origins. I identified my problem of not fitting into American society and began to fully adapt to my new surroundings. For instance, I began by eating food from the school cafeterias. I remedied my problems myself having seen the extent to which my parents’ attempted remedy had failed. Going to visit the land of my origin may have given me a concrete representation of my nationality, but it did not fix my problem of fitting in within American Society, just as Maibelle’s trip into Chinatown didn’t “fix” her major problems. This is also why I believe that the Nigerian children will never find the answers they seek in Africa. Their issues with adapting to American society can never be fixed by returning to the place of their origin, though their parents and the rest of society believe this to be true. As Carrie Latet said, “junk mail, junk food, our society is full of junk living, period.” It seems that society continues to perpetuate junk ideas as well.
The Washington Post Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092200582.html?hpid=topnews
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Mixed Race Students in College : Kaitlin McCune
Okay, so I didn't know exactly what I wanted to make my blog about so I decided to surf the web for anything that may relate to our class in general. I came across an article pertaining to a book called Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity, and Community on Campus by Kristen A. Renn. In the book she tries to display the different experiences and identities of mixed race students who try to break down racial categories and ethnic divides that still exist all around them. She also presents her findings from research she did on a variety of 56 mixed race students at many different colleges. In the book, the main focus and question that Renn is attempting to answer, as described in the article by Raechele Pope, Danielle Johnson, and Jason Jakubowski, is "Do mixed race students have different experiences, needs, and expectations than both monoracial white students and students of color?"
This question is a difficult one to answer I think since the college experience is different for everyone. Mixed race students' experiences, needs, and expectations depend heavily on the demographics of their school, its diversity, and how accepting peers are of varying cultural backgrounds. Although the novels we have taken a look at in class so far do not necessarily deal with mixed race individuals on college campuses, they do, however, involve different experiences of mixed race individuals in a school environment. Birdie, for example, had a much different experience at Nkruma than she did at her predominately white school in New Hampshire. Her needs to be accepted and her expectations of who she should be were very different from each other, and were influenced by the contexts of her situation and the racial background of her peers. Birdie's experiences, needs, and expectations were very distinctive from the white students' and students' of color. Unlike them, she did not already have an identity or race predetermined for her by her skin color, so it took her a long time to figure out where she would belong and how she would define herself.
Maibelle Chung, as a young girl, also wanted to have a certain identity at her school that was impossible because of her phenotypic characteristics. Even now in the novel she is struggling with who she is supposed to be. Maibelle, Birdie, and many others had to endure a lot because of their mixed race identities. It's hard to determine just how school, peers, or in connection to the article, college experiences differ among mixed race students and just how they might affect them. I think it's important for us to be aware of the various ethnicities and races, or mixed races present at Miami. After reading the article and researching the book a little I started asking myself the same question, which Renn strives to explain, except about Miami students: "Do mixed race students at Miami have different experiences, needs, and expectations than both monoracial white students and students of color?" What I'd like to believe is far from what actually occurs I'm sure.
If you'd like to take a closer look at the article about the book, which I mainly referenced, here is the direct link: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3752/is_200507/ai_n14826892/pg_1
This question is a difficult one to answer I think since the college experience is different for everyone. Mixed race students' experiences, needs, and expectations depend heavily on the demographics of their school, its diversity, and how accepting peers are of varying cultural backgrounds. Although the novels we have taken a look at in class so far do not necessarily deal with mixed race individuals on college campuses, they do, however, involve different experiences of mixed race individuals in a school environment. Birdie, for example, had a much different experience at Nkruma than she did at her predominately white school in New Hampshire. Her needs to be accepted and her expectations of who she should be were very different from each other, and were influenced by the contexts of her situation and the racial background of her peers. Birdie's experiences, needs, and expectations were very distinctive from the white students' and students' of color. Unlike them, she did not already have an identity or race predetermined for her by her skin color, so it took her a long time to figure out where she would belong and how she would define herself.
Maibelle Chung, as a young girl, also wanted to have a certain identity at her school that was impossible because of her phenotypic characteristics. Even now in the novel she is struggling with who she is supposed to be. Maibelle, Birdie, and many others had to endure a lot because of their mixed race identities. It's hard to determine just how school, peers, or in connection to the article, college experiences differ among mixed race students and just how they might affect them. I think it's important for us to be aware of the various ethnicities and races, or mixed races present at Miami. After reading the article and researching the book a little I started asking myself the same question, which Renn strives to explain, except about Miami students: "Do mixed race students at Miami have different experiences, needs, and expectations than both monoracial white students and students of color?" What I'd like to believe is far from what actually occurs I'm sure.
If you'd like to take a closer look at the article about the book, which I mainly referenced, here is the direct link: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3752/is_200507/ai_n14826892/pg_1
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Interracial Relationships in Movies and Television-Gretchen Wesche
Hello everyone! As you can see by my title, I'm going to be discussing interracial relationships in movies and television. As we have seen in class, interracial relationships are being seen more and more in America, especially since 1967, and this trend has been reflected in the media. For my blog entry, I've made a list of a few contemporary movies (set in the present) to discuss (focusing mainly on those in which the interracial relationships are not emphasized and are simply another part of the movie or television show, something that may not have occured in older movies), and I will begin with my personal favorite:
The movie "Love Actually" is set in modern day London during the holiday season and features several interracial (or "inter-ethnicity") relationships:
*Keira Knightly's character and her husband, a black man played by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
*Thomas Sangster, who plays Liam Neeson's (white) son and his classmate, an African American girl visiting London for school played by Olivia Olson.
*Laura Linney and Rodrigo Santoro's characters (Santoro is Portuguese and also played Xerxes in "300").
*Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz's characters: Jamie, an Englishman, and Aurelia, a Portuguese girl he meets in Marseilles.
All of these relationships are treated the same as any other relationships between people of the same race in the movie, with the possible exception of Jamie and Aurelia's story simply because it involves the two being from different countries and having to learn each other's languages. I believe that by including these relationships, the main theme that "love actually is all around" is further enhanced; that love does not see race or ethnicity and can even cross language barriers.
A Disney TV musical version of the traditionally European play "Cinderella" also features interracial relationships not only on the romantic level but also on the family level. The movie features the singer Brandy as the title character, Bernadette Peters as her step mother with one white and one black daughter, Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen, Victor Garber as the King, and Paolo Montalban, who is Filipino, as the Prince. As you can see, this movie not only includes the interracial relationship between Cinderella and the Prince, but it also includes very multiracial families as well! This is an interesting casting choice which I see as ultimately portraying the Cinderella story as a universal fairy tale for everyone which is found in many cultures including those outside of Europe.
"The Family Stone" also includes an interracial couple, though with a "twist" in that the relationship is between two men. Though their relationship is just a minor part of the film, it is intersting to note that the fact that their relationship is between someone who is black and someone who is white is never really mentioned. Rather, the focus is on the fact that it is a homosexual relationship, which can be compared to the movement to legalize interracial relationships and marriages in the late 1960s in that there is currently a movement to legalize homosexual marriages.
Finally, in the television show "Smallville," a young Clark Kent (Tom Wellling) is perpetually infatuated with Lana Lang, played by Kristen Kreuk, who is part Chinese and part Dutch. There really is not too much to say about this relationship though in that Lana's biracial background is rarely if ever mentioned, which if anything suggests America's movement towards acceptance of interracial relationships.
The third season of "Desperate Housewives" may also be included in this category-but only partially. In the television show, Gabrielle, who is Latina, dates a white man who is running for mayor. At first, the simple fact that she is Latina and he is white seems to mean nothing. However, the audience and Gabrielle later find out that this is not the case and her new husband sees her instead as a way to hopefully win more of the Latino vote, now involving the relationship with racial politics.
Of course, there are still many movies and television shows that include interracial relationships, emphasizing them, often as the main conflict. These include (but are of course not limited to) "Save the Last Dance," "Guess Who" (the "reversed" remake of the older "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"), a future Disney animated movie featuring their first black princess (voiced by Anika Noni Rose) and a prince from a fictional kingdom who is presumably not black (though apparently, earlier in production, the prince was to be European and named Harry. Now he is listed as being named "Naveen" and having "an invented accent that has the romantic suavity of Italian with a sprinkling of mid-east exoticism," though this is all of course subject to change), and even the short comedy "Yellow Fever" by Wong Fu Productions in which Philip Wang ponders the notion that most Asian-Caucasian couples are between Asian girls and white guys but not the other way around (if you're interested, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOyRWuklsiQ).
The movie "Love Actually" is set in modern day London during the holiday season and features several interracial (or "inter-ethnicity") relationships:
*Keira Knightly's character and her husband, a black man played by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
*Thomas Sangster, who plays Liam Neeson's (white) son and his classmate, an African American girl visiting London for school played by Olivia Olson.
*Laura Linney and Rodrigo Santoro's characters (Santoro is Portuguese and also played Xerxes in "300").
*Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz's characters: Jamie, an Englishman, and Aurelia, a Portuguese girl he meets in Marseilles.
All of these relationships are treated the same as any other relationships between people of the same race in the movie, with the possible exception of Jamie and Aurelia's story simply because it involves the two being from different countries and having to learn each other's languages. I believe that by including these relationships, the main theme that "love actually is all around" is further enhanced; that love does not see race or ethnicity and can even cross language barriers.
A Disney TV musical version of the traditionally European play "Cinderella" also features interracial relationships not only on the romantic level but also on the family level. The movie features the singer Brandy as the title character, Bernadette Peters as her step mother with one white and one black daughter, Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen, Victor Garber as the King, and Paolo Montalban, who is Filipino, as the Prince. As you can see, this movie not only includes the interracial relationship between Cinderella and the Prince, but it also includes very multiracial families as well! This is an interesting casting choice which I see as ultimately portraying the Cinderella story as a universal fairy tale for everyone which is found in many cultures including those outside of Europe.
"The Family Stone" also includes an interracial couple, though with a "twist" in that the relationship is between two men. Though their relationship is just a minor part of the film, it is intersting to note that the fact that their relationship is between someone who is black and someone who is white is never really mentioned. Rather, the focus is on the fact that it is a homosexual relationship, which can be compared to the movement to legalize interracial relationships and marriages in the late 1960s in that there is currently a movement to legalize homosexual marriages.
Finally, in the television show "Smallville," a young Clark Kent (Tom Wellling) is perpetually infatuated with Lana Lang, played by Kristen Kreuk, who is part Chinese and part Dutch. There really is not too much to say about this relationship though in that Lana's biracial background is rarely if ever mentioned, which if anything suggests America's movement towards acceptance of interracial relationships.
The third season of "Desperate Housewives" may also be included in this category-but only partially. In the television show, Gabrielle, who is Latina, dates a white man who is running for mayor. At first, the simple fact that she is Latina and he is white seems to mean nothing. However, the audience and Gabrielle later find out that this is not the case and her new husband sees her instead as a way to hopefully win more of the Latino vote, now involving the relationship with racial politics.
Of course, there are still many movies and television shows that include interracial relationships, emphasizing them, often as the main conflict. These include (but are of course not limited to) "Save the Last Dance," "Guess Who" (the "reversed" remake of the older "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"), a future Disney animated movie featuring their first black princess (voiced by Anika Noni Rose) and a prince from a fictional kingdom who is presumably not black (though apparently, earlier in production, the prince was to be European and named Harry. Now he is listed as being named "Naveen" and having "an invented accent that has the romantic suavity of Italian with a sprinkling of mid-east exoticism," though this is all of course subject to change), and even the short comedy "Yellow Fever" by Wong Fu Productions in which Philip Wang ponders the notion that most Asian-Caucasian couples are between Asian girls and white guys but not the other way around (if you're interested, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOyRWuklsiQ).
Monday, September 3, 2007
Canaries in a Coal Mine: Marilyn Wickenheiser
On the first day of Everyday Hybridities, we were all presented with the idea that race is a social construct—that it doesn’t really exist. Birdie’s entire journey ends in
If you look back to their experiences, society has made it less than easy for someone of color to be invisible—to simply blend in. It all began at the Nkrumah school. In a society of black majority, Birdie was originally an outcast. When Birdie stands to say Black is Beautiful, someone shouts out “Guess you must be ugly” (45). The kids don’t hesitate to point out that she is lighter skinned. Birdie goes on to have her experiences in
Birdie’s family also poisons her with the idea that color is of importance. Her father never treated her and Cole the same. Deck always tried to explain his work and ideas to Cole, but never to Birdie. Even Carmen and Cole had a different relationship. Deck and Carmen didn’t know how to raise someone who could pass for white. Their grandmother also treats the girls differently. She always gave Birdie normal presents, but gave Cole a Golliwog doll. She would talk to Birdie a lot, but Cole was always in a different room watching TV whenever they went to visit. By making up an entire new life, as Jesse and Sheila, while they are on the run,
In both
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