Culture Is Important

Condoleezza Rice once said "We make a mistake when we say: 'you have to find role models that look like you.' If Sally Ride ... had been waiting for a female astronaut role model, she would never have done it." Which sure, I guess is true to some capacity, but I think that having a role model that looks like you is important. When I look for role models, I often find them in people I can relate to. An overwhelming number of times I find that I most relate to people of color. The other day at Wendy's a lady came in with her daughter, the little girl couldn't have been older than 4, and the most striking thing about her was the beat up picture she wouldn't let go of: a picture of Princess Tiana of "The Princess and The Frog," the only black Disney princess.

I know what you're thinking: why does it matter that she's holding on to a princess picture, every little girl does that. Okay, sure, but I've noticed that most girls pick a favorite princess because she has something to do with her. I babysit a girl named Ariel, and when a "Little Mermaid" song started playing from my Disney Spotify playlist she screamed "that's my song!" She connected to Princess Ariel on a name basis. For me, my favorite princess was Princess Jasmine (and Cinderella because she is such a quintessential princess); she looked the most similar to a young Maame B. I can't say that I did it purposely, more subconscious, but that was my reality; I related to her based of physicality: she looked the most like me. I wasn't a 5 year old lobbying for cultural representation in Disney, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have benefited from a black princess when I was her age. It reminds me of when Glozell went to Disney Land and met Princess Tiana. It was a blaring example for the need for cultural representation.

I can't help but think of all the times people, including myself, have pointed out the lack of cultural diversity in Disney's most recent films such as Frozen. Every time I bring this up the same conversations ensues

Me: Why doesn't Frozen have people of color?
People who've never had lack of representation: The black princess is in the background during the ball in Frozen for .000012 seconds. 

Me: Why aren't the Frozen animated characters more diverse?
People who've never had lack of representation: It takes place in Scandinavia. Do you really think black people live in Scandinavia?

I have been in real arguments as to what ideas are too *far out there*, a talking snowman never seems to land in the same 'crossing the line' category as people of color surprisingly.

The upcoming film "Exodus: Gods and Kings" has a very diverse cast. It chronicles the Biblical story of Moses to a  T--if the T was upside down, inverted and then soaked in bleach. The tale of the Egyptian heir to the throne has an all white upper class cast. Roles like Moses and the entire royal family are cast by white people, while roles like "Egyptian Lower Class Civilian" and "Egyptian Thief" have been handed to people of color. This is far from the only depiction of Moses in a film, there is a far better version that's a cartoon: "The Prince of Egypt." I used to watch it all the time as a kid and it shows the story almost perfectly, see but that's not the point because "Exodus: Gods and Kings" is a whitewashed version and this one is going to be seen in more theaters, meaning more people will view it, meaning more people will associate the very brown man Moses, to a very non-brown Christian Bale.

And lastly on the topic of Keke Palmer, and where Ms. Rice and I differ. I've been rooting for Keke Palmer since "Akeelah and the Bee." I'd seen the Scripts National Spelling Bee before that film, but she actually made me (and many other young black girls) believe that I could win (I got no further than 2nd place in my school Spelling Bee with the word "quarantine;" I had to spell check that because I still don't know how to spell it). Even though I didn't come out a winner, I did come out a believer that anything is possible. Now Keke has a talk show called "Just Keke" making her the youngest talk show host. And her biggest accomplishment in my eyes is that she's just been cast as Cinderella on Broadway. That's such a breakthrough! Some 2 or 3 generations ago black people couldn't be seen in any Broadway production and now Keke is the leading role in an iconic fairytale.

I can't say that I'm happy with our current state. I'm not happy that there seems to be more colored girls in the background of movies and less on center stage. I'm not happy that Hollywood whitewashes often. I'm not happy that there's a trend towards believing that we should be 'color blind.' I'm not happy that embracing diversity in culture is often viewed as something to be ashamed of. I'm not happy that African, African-American, Asian, Latino and Native cultures are often used as costumes. So no, I'm not happy. I guess I'm satisfied, only slightly. I'll survive, but I won't thrive, not in this environment, and that's a problem.

How To Be Black

The other day I saw the trailer for the upcoming film "Dear White People". As a 16 year old black girl who lives in a predominantly white suburb (technically its own city, but it might as well be a suburb) it's safe to say that I can relate. The film's premise is that a biracial girl starts a radio show called "Dear White People" where she gives white people tips on how to stop being racist, however unintentional it may be. The thing is that a lot of people, especially white people and LeTyrone, a young, urban, African-American, man, growing up in an unsteady area with an African-American single mother who works two jobs because his equally African-American father died in a drug raid (this is actually just a white person trying really hard to seem black), think that the film is very racist.

After seeing this I got really revved up on the topic of pointing out and fixing racism in today's America and started researching things similar to the film. I came across a bunch of PoC YouTubers who address topics like those brought up in the film and one of them I found was Akilah SmoothieFreak. She was talking about one of her favorite books being How to Be Black. So I looked it up and found out it was critically acclaimed and actually a really great book even though it had a bit of product placement for the blog "Stuff White People Like".

If you read "Books For Adults" you know that my book store options are next to none and as previously stated living in a predominantly white suburb (what suburb isn't tbh) didn't help. I didn't even bother to go to any of them because who likes some semi-tall string bean black girl dressed in mostly black asking you where she can find a book called How to Be Black. Who is honestly going to help?! My need for the book did trump my contempt of side eye from English majors at their summer job, but not enough for me to actually see the side eye: so I called. I called Hastings and Signs of Life neither of which carried the book. Personally I think it's weird to carry ample copies of the House of Night series and exactly zero copies of a critically acclaimed New York Times Best Seller written by a Harvard graduate, but I digress.  The Signs of Life guy was talking to someone in the background about a spill on aisle 5 (there are no aisle there I've been)...let's just say I caught your shade okay, and I brought a flashlight that's why you're on blast (is this even putting him on blast??? was he throwing shade on me????? idk????). Long story short I received sound side eye but I trudged on.

All of a sudden, like the time I hit my head meeting the floor of the pre-k bus (I have a permanent scar) it hit me. I own a kindle!! Why have I been buying tangible copies of books when all I had to do was walk into my parents room and use the Kindle. My parents are really chill about us buying books because books enhance our mind or some weird hippy reason that's probably the same reason why my mom hides things like eggplant in our food. It was an extremely simple process that was nearly identical to this

Me: "Can I buy a book on Kindle?"
My dad: "Okay."

Anyways, I'm extremely excited to read this book because

• The author's name is Baratunde Thurston and a really close family friend's name is Babatunde
• he let's me debate politics with him in a non-hostile way it's great
• I'm catching a kind of Mindy Kaling witty humor vibe 
• I read a few excerpts that were hilarious 
• He went to the posterchild of Ivy League schools: Harvard
• The Ivy League is my baby
• I'm not Malcolm Gladwell, so you can bet your mother's life that I think that Harvard will give you a better education than Cloud County Community College

All in all, I feel like this book is going to be a 10/10 would recommend to everyone to read, even though I haven't opened the first page yet.

Lastly, I would like to thank Amazon, for being the only book store to not sound side eye me today and for having the book in stock even if it's always there because it's in the cloud.