home sweet home

Hello old friend, how I’ve missed you.

You should have known I couldn't stay away for long. 

Sadly, it is not a topic of joy that brings me back, but one of annoyance. This week I started my black summer school thing. Except for the math part of it, it is very enjoyable. Although I will say that being taught Algebra after just finishing advanced Pre-Calc is very refreshing. Plus, I don’t think I have ever had so many black friends, it’s very nice. 

But the topic of my post is not my reconnection with my people, but about one of my teachers. She is of course black, which is very cool since I have never had a black teacher, but she herself is really starting to piss me off. We were talking about the new disney princess, which, excitingly, is black. I guess there’s a big controversy over her mate, who appears white, but is actually Brazilian. I’m not sure why this is so upsetting to people, if it’s her being black or her not having a black spouse, but she asked us how we felt about it.

When she asked me, this is more or less how I responded: 

I think it’s refreshing to see a biracial couple because all you see on TV and movies today is usually a black male and female as if either of them are incapable of dating anyone but their own kind. It has gone from the token person to the token couple. In any movie where there are multiple couples, there is at least one black couple. 

I thought this was a good response, but apparently my teacher was not pleased. This is how she responded: 

So you think that the black community has been represented well enough that we can now move on?

Wait. Back up. When did I ever say that, because I don’t remember having done so.

My teacher then proceeds to talk about how we have not been accurately portrayed in media, and I fully agree with that, we haven’t. Look at Mami in Gone with the Wind. We have a long ways to go still, I’m not denying that. But can we only reach that goal of being accurately portrayed by having both a black male and female couple? What will that prove? I believe that it will only support the idea that black people only hook up with black people, which simply isn’t true. 

But it wasn’t this statement that got me. It was when my teacher said, “When will we finally have an ethnically correct couple,” that really pissed me off. Ethnically correct? As if a black man dating a white woman or vice versa was ethnically incorrect. How can you be so ignorant? 

peace.