Critical Race Theory and Me

So much information packed into such a small amount of writing. I have had some experience with the Critical Race Theory (CRT) but mostly just in the past couple years. Before my college experience I had not really ever been taught about white privilege. I don’t know if that was a normal growing up for most kids or not. I feel that in today’s school they are teaching a little more about this then they did when I was in middle and high school.

I learned about social construction in my sociology class a short four years ago and learned that while most things in our lives have been socially constructed and are really made up things that someone somewhere decided one day was a thing and people started agreeing. For instance somewhere along the line people made up the language we speak today. We call a chair a chair because someone at some point decided to call it that and so other people started calling it that and now everyone calls it a chair.

This is the same type of situation for race. One day someone decided that people with darker skin were less of people than people with light skin and people believed it for some strange reason. Instead of just saying they have different skin it became a horrible thing. IT was the same for Jewish people with Hitler. Hitler decided that Jews were less of people and since he was someone in power other people believed him and we had the Holocaust.

On the Purdue Owl site it states, ” it (broadly) emphasizes the importance of examining and attempting to understand the socio-cultural forces that shape how we and others perceive, experience, and respond to racism.” This is important because this goes to say that instead of just examining racism that we need to try to better understand it or we will never be able to move past it.

In the second article, Bell wrote, “In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, blacks who were successful at business or farming were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan
and other hate groups for death and destruction.” This was because at the time Whites did not want to see any black be successful as they believed they should all still be slaves. This was another social construct of how people at the time thought that blacks should be treated differently than whites.

A big part of this article that stood out was when Bell wrote, “Passing is well known among black people in the United States and is a feature of race subordination in all societies structured on white supremacy. Notwithstanding the purported benefits of black heritage in an era of affirmative action, passing is not an obsolete phenomenon that has slipped into history.” People should never have to hide their race and try to fit in with another group just to be accepted. People should not have to hide their race in order to find work and provide for their families. This makes me sad that this still happens in our country today.

I watched the TMZ video a few times and tried to find the positive in the video as that is just the way that I am. I could not. This man say that he came from an Urban community and lived in Hotels and at that instance you could see in his face that he knew he just said something he shouldn’t have. In that one sentence he pretty much said that all black people are poor are grow up poor and don’t make anything of themselves. Then he tried to justify what he said by saying he hangs out with black rappers and grew up watching black comics. While I do agree with him on one statement where he stated that people use to make fun of race and now it has become a serious issue. I think that is because more people have opened up their eyes to see that what was happening was racism and cultural appropriation. I do not think it was right for him to say that if there was someone better to play the role he would not be doing it because right there I feel he is saying that there are no black actors that are better than him.

Here is a question to ponder though, if a black man were trying to voice a white character would people be as concerned about it? I think that the biggest concern here is how this man answered to people’s concerns. He did it in a way that was inappropriate and he needs to learn some manners. I don’t care if you think it is fine for you to act like you are someone else when you are portraying that type of person in a negative light. When he did his impression saying, “Yo I wouldn’t step foot in that club less I can nae nae,” I believe this was also inappropriate as he is making it seem like that is how black people talk. I don’t think I have ever met a single black person that talked this way. I think his whole interview was out there and had many stereotypes that the black community is trying to break away from but when famous people still portray them in that way how are they ever going to get people to view them any different.