Representation is a word that is widely stressed in the black community. In the media, Black folks are depicted in a plethora of characters, yet the ones that seem to get recognition are ones that put us in helping hands of the white man. These roles of being a slave, maid, “mammies” and the reoccurring sassy black friend call attention to us but not in the way of representation.
When representation pops up, it means race, sexuality, genders/nonbinary, body types, etc. Either way, representation is a sensitive subject because it aligns a personal trait to a character for normal people. Not to say that films or television shows of a positive depiction of black characters don’t exist. What the question is: Why is stereotypes the only thing that gives our community the recognition it deserves?
When we play drug addicts, violent warlords, maids in white homes helped by a white woman, the list goes on and on, that is when we get Oscar nominations. That is when you see our faces on the red carpet smiling like nothing is wrong. But for a film that centers around a white man falling in love with an interface, computer sex included, Oscar nominations are thrown at their feet. There have been many films of white people playing characters that don’t feed into “stereotypical white roles”; mostly due to the lack of stereotypical roles for white actors in the first place.
For white people, you can play the same distraught character who has one scene that is played over and over again of their face turning red, screaming at the top of their lungs with a tear falling down their face. But for black people, you have to be a black man being whipped, while the camera pans in for the single tear shot that grasp the heart of viewers.
For a white person, you have a white man being a manipulative, privileged broker who evades a harsh maximum security prison and instead prances around a prison with a tennis court, later to not have learned from his lessons. For a black person, a black woman has to play a lazy, abusive, drug addict single mother who tears down her child and beats her; this is what wins an Oscar.
These films that depict these characters in a submissive light are great movies with great actors, but, why is it the only movies that give us a standing ovation. What about Will Smith in Concussion? An African man who was a doctor that wouldn’t give up. Adepero Oduye in Pariah? A movie about a black lesbian trying to come to terms with her sexuality.
Lack of great representation is toxic to a race that is always under the microscope for the stupid understanding of mob mentality. We are supposed to be one brain to the world of the whites and to control that they show you the only way to get somewhere in the world is for the help of the white man to appear. For a “nice” slave master to save your life; for a nice southern white lady to treat you like a favorite pet rather than a maid; for a white woman to gather your stories about being a maid because you have no voice of your own; for a general in an army during the Civil War to treat you like a “human being”. This is what they are teaching black America.
