Reclaiming What It Means To Be A Women And/Or Person Of Color

The nuclear family amongst minorities has declined drastically over the past twenty-five years or so.  Single parenthood is rampant as fathers (and sometimes mothers) abandon their families or distance themselves before the child is even born. It’s almost impossible to look at this vicious cycle without an awareness of the media’s hand in it.  Women of color are oftentimes portrayed with what one would call a “double stereotype” in movies, music videos and advertisements.  They are subjected to typifying notions of race as well as gender.  Latinas are displayed as no-nonsense, firey, quick-witted, and passionate types.  Black women are shown as nagging, angry, sharp-tongued and sometimes overflowing with an insatiable sexual desire.  Lastly, Asian women are timid, submissive, coy and coquettish. But above all, these women are presented in a way that assumes that they are utterly of no value to themselves, men or society.

               So how do we change this?  Who can change this?  Frequently, it’s been a struggle throughout various ethnic groups over who has the right to create media about the Black experience, the Latino experience or the Asian experience.  Some African Americans feel that unless you’re black in America, you cannot and will not ever understand what it means to be black in America.  But when commenting on white filmmakers portrayal of blackness in their work, bell hooks suggests, “their representations of blackness, along with others, were the positive interventions providing concrete, interrogative evidence that is was not so much the color of the person who made the images that was crucial but the perspective, the standpoint, the politics”(ReeltoReal 5).

  We all have to recognize the urgency to reverse these double stereotypes. Women and minorities have to penetrate the mass media with a force strong enough for their voices to be heard.  I have discovered a website called BlackandMarriedwithKids.com that promotes healthy relationships for African American married couples, daters and parents. The creators of this site are aware of the rhetoric, music videos, movies and ads that are a danger to black family life. And they're even more aware of the fact that artists of our own race perpetuate the devaluation of our people. 

 

 However, there are rare instances where an artist does speak out against in.  In "Bye Baby", rapper Nas speaks out to the people who criticized his failed marriage, many of whom are men who refuse to marry the mothers of their children:

And all I seen was selfish cowards, under they breath
Saying “why did Nas trust her?”, but look at yourself, speak louder bruh
You live with your baby moms and scared to make an honest woman out of her
And make her your bride, fake pimps you ain’t even alive

 

 Through the strengthening of minorities, we are able to better destroy an identity that has been given to us against our will. But we have to bring awareness to the misrepresentation with the use of all forums available to us.  

I just wanted to share an excerpt from "For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" by Ntozake Shange, which was the inspiration to Tyler Perry's Film "For Colored Girls".  I think it calls out the need for media about women and minorities that holds true to how these people truly are and not how those in power view them

“somebody/ anybody
sing a black girl's song
bring her out
to know herself
to know you
but sing her rhythms
caring/ struggle/ hard times
sing her song of life
she's been dead so long
closed in silence so long
she doesn't know the sound
of her own voice
her infinite beauty
she's half-notes scattered
without rhythm/ no tune
sing her sighs
sing the song of her possibilities
sing a righteous gospel
let her be born
let her be born
& handled warmly.”

― Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf