This is a recent photo of Dolezal. Now, looking at this photo, one would deduce this is a photo of a white woman, possibly from the 1980s, after getting a nice sun tan in the tropics.
This is a younger photo of Dolezal. This is not a black woman. Her parents say that her ancestry is mostly Czech, German and Swiss.
No way is that black. And she can't pull a Trevor Noah or Charlize Theron and say she's African-American, because she grew up in Africa.
Dolezal resigned on Monday, June 15 from her position as head of the Spokane, Wash. chapter of the NAACP amid reports that she had falsified her ancestry.
If this seems familiar, then there was a movie that came out in 1986 call Soul Man, starring C. Thomas Howell, plays a Harvard law student who is able to tan his skin to pass for black to win a scholarship.
The image above is a scene from the movie in which Howell's character has been invited to dinner by the daughter of his rich landlord, played by Leslie Nielsen, and he envisions them married. Of course, the whole scene is offensive as Howell's character talks about doing heroin and calls the daughter "slut" and "bitch" and ends by breaking the fourth wall and screams, "What'cha lookin' at?!"
Soul Man was trashed when it came out, but is probably more memorable for its cast including a young Julia Louis-Dreyfus as well as Ronnie Reagan, son of Ronald and Nancy, as a college student who assumes that because Howell is black he will be a great basketball player.
Soul Man is a movie that exposes many stereotypes white America has about black people. Even Howell's character is guilty as he walks into a study room, dressed like a militant Black Panther-type, only to recognize the other black college students are very well dressed and groom. Other people tell racist jokes or have racist thoughts that Howell wants to rape white women, commit physical harm to people who think he has a knife, etc.
Dolezal says she identifies as black and there are allegations she or someone she knows may have falsified hate mail that she received in a post office box. There are reports that Dolezal sued Howard University for racial discrimination because some people there thought she was black because of her paintings, which now they say may be allegedly plagiarized.
So, whatever more happens with this story will happen, but people it brings a lot of people who grew up in the late 1980s and 1990s back to a time in white youth sometimes pretending to be black.
While Soul Man has a white man pretending to be black for a scholarship, other movies have white people pretending to be black, just because.
There's Gary Oldman as Drexel, a pimp in True Romance.
There's Jack Black in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.
And there's Seth Green in Can't Hardly Wait.
Then, there was Vanilla Ice.
And his Canadian counterpart, Snow.
Yeah, it was a crazy time.
When Eminem came out in the latter 1990s, it's probably no surprise many people thought it was a joke, but he was hanging out with rappers like Busta Rhymes and Dr. Dre, but was this an elaborate joke like when Joaquin Phoenix pretended to be a rapper for a few years. No, Eminem was the real deal and like the Beastie Boys, he seemed to be the diamond in the rough of white rappers who could really back up their persona with good music.
Unfortunately, the Beastie Boys are no more as the death of MCA, aka Adam Yauch, in 2012 ended their 31-year career. Now, Eminem has won an Oscar and other awards, earning him respect and recognition.
That being said, it has ushered in a new young blood.
Like Macklemore, whose name sounds like it should be a type of Girl Scout Cookie.
And Iggy Azalea, who looks like Marlon Wayans in White Chicks.
But none of them compare to Chet Haze.
Chet Haze's real name is Chester Hanks. He is the son of Tom Hanks, who is the white person version of Wayne Brady, and Rita Wilson, who helped bring My Big Fat Greek Wedding to wider audiences. When your parents are Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, you're not gangsta. Ozzie and Harriet are more gangsta.
I mean look at this:
That is one of the cutest photos ever. The only way this photo could be cuter if they were holding kittens and puppies.
Chet is a frat boy rapper, who attends Northwestern University. No way are you gangsta.
Your name is Chester. This cartoon dog, also named Chester, is more gangsta than Chet Haze.
And no one named Chet has ever been gangsta.
Take Chet from Weird Science:
Not gangsta at all.
But ironically, as Chris Rock once said, no white people would want to change positions with him and he's rich.
Do people want to be stopped just for riding in the car with a white woman, which happened to some people I went to college with? Do people want to be followed in stores for no reason other than they "look suspicious" or even have the cops called on them, which has happened to people I know?
No one wants to go in a store and be told something is "very expensive" even though they have the money to pay for it. No one wants to have their job applications immediately rejected just because their name doesn't sound Anglo-Saxon.
No one wants that, but it happens. It happens far too often in this society even though we would want to admit it doesn't.
We have praised the redneck culture by encouraging white people to wear trucker hats, sleeveless-shirts, and torn blue jeans but we have condemned black people for the way they dress. I don't want to see saggy pants or butt cracks so everyone needs to pull up their damned pants.
But we have turned a blind eye. And also blind are the white people who pretend to act black, but on any given day, definitely wouldn't want to be black.
No comments:
Post a Comment