I was just thinking about a convo I had the other day with a girlfriend of mine which made me realise that surprisingly enough there are other ppl out there who wonder the same things as me. It's just that they are bold enough to say it. The girl in question is white and her query to me was why does Halle Berry keep saying she's black when she's not. Now any person who looks at Halle would say yes she is black. But her mom is white. Which means she's mixed. She really isn’t one or the other. At least not entirely. So why does she feel more comfortable to say she is black when she could claim that she is white? It's not like she would be lying now would it?
We wondered as well how does it make her mother feel that her daughter doesn’t quite embrace the fact that she has a white heritage as well. Agreed it is her right to claim what is her race but how does that go down with her mother? My friend has kids herself that are mixed. And she said that yes it would hurt her if her daughter only sought to identify herself as black since she was a mixture of white and black.
Let's reverse the situations. Say it was that Halle was claiming the she was white. I somehow think that a lot of criticism would come her way for basically "dissing" her black roots. She would be called a hypocrite, a wanna be and a whole other slew of things. Do persons who are mixed just state that hey we're black because it's the easy or sensible way to avoid conflict? It hardly seems fair. I think persons should be able to accept and embrace every diversity of their being without having to be made to feel like they've committed some sort of offense against each faction.
I know another girl who I swore was white. Turns out her mom is black. And she embraces that fact. My girl feel she black lolol. But see I am arguing that ppl should be able to view themselves as both ..a mixture even…and claim both as their heritage…and not one more than the other….and yet I still see her as white even tho I KNOW her mom is a black woman….and this is because to my eye she looks white therefore she IS white. :s you're mind is a funny thing. Cus even tho you may have a realization about certain things and the fact that they are wrong it's hard to break yourself out of the habit of certain trains of thought.
And while we're on this topic about black and white….why is it ok to have a Black Entertainment Television which is meant to cater to the "black" viewer? Originally it was created for black ppl, by black ppl with only black artistes. Well we can see that didn't quite work out cus all colors of ppl watch BET and I pretty sure Eminem and Justin Timberlake are not black.
I'm trying to look at all the reasons why it was created and truthfully looking at the wide spectrum of things…the music channel which existed before BET did pretty much cater to persons who were white. There wasn't much hip hop or rap or "crunk". So along comes BET with the answer to our problems.
Shoot we even have BET awards and they go to …you guessed it black artistes. If we looked at the situation in the light that this was done to basically recognize those artistes who might have been overlooked at the traditional awards because of their colour..then we can say that having a channel called Black Entertainment Television is really not so bad right?
I tell ya tho…if there ever had to be a White Entertainment Television, quite a few protests would be featured prominently in the news.
