Privilege and internet trolling...or walking in someone else's boots
If you haven't been on the web for the past 24 hours you might not know about the latest internet uproar. It involves a contributing Forbes tech writer, Gene Marks, who is a white, middle-aged man placing himself in the position of a poor black youth and expounding on how he would basically pull himself up by his bootstraps by utilizing today's tech resources. The posted article is egregious in its short-sighted privilege. The author seemingly doesn't understand that most of the youth who are without his own privilege face overwhelming odds against their ever rising above their parents' station. This fact has been shown in studies and has been related in anedoctal testimonies. The reality is that most bootstraps can't levy against the weight of lifting a person up from crushing circumstances. Some straps may snap altogether. Some boots may have no straps at all. Or the boots may be non-existent
You see, not every house has such technical mainstays as a personal computer or smartphone or the latest Apple product. Even computers offered by public libraries have severe time limitations, not allowing the leisure given to those with personally-owned computers. So for all of the author's theoretical expounding, it simply doesn't work in the real world.
Given that the article was printed in Forbes (which is hardly reading material for most inner-city youth or youth in any neighborhood) you'd have to wonder whom the author's obvious audience is. It doesn't take much rumination to know that the article isn't actually meant for the black youth who are the focus of the write-up but rather is simply a victim-blaming diatribe that allows the mostly mainstream Forbes readers to exempt the system that has produced the inequities and lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of those who find it hard to combat that system.
But that's beside the point of this post. As offensive as some may find the article on its face, there is a particular reason that I refuse to link to that article. That is because I now have reason to believe that much of the controversy generated was a deliberate move by the author to bring "eyeballs" to Forbes and increase his own "marketability."
One Forbes staff writer (which is a different animal from the contributing writer) actually sums up the situation for what it truly is: trolling the internet. Forbes staff writer Kashmir Hill details how contributing writers to Forbes are paid based on the unique visitors as well as returning visitors. Editors at the magazine do not approve these posts in advance so the writer has a lot of carte blanche to drum up those eyeballs by writing something so totally obnoxious that visitors simply go to the article to lambast it. Ms. Hill offers that Gene Marks is especially adept at "trolling the internet" to build his brand, even at risk of diminishing his brand. As for me, I simply refuse to be manipulated by a soulless human being who would use the plight of the truly disadvantaged to build up his bank account.
This is strikingly similar to the controversy that arose earlier this year on the Psychology Today site when the obstensibly racist and incompetent social psychologist, Satoshi Kanazawa, wrote some worthless screed about the unattractiveness of black women. Not only was the post offensive but it was roundly disputed and proved unfounded by Kanazawa's own peers. As with Forbes, Psychology Today also had a set up of no oversight for contributing writers. And I suspect that contributing writers to the site were paid based on the "eyeball" tier. The more controversial a post, the more hits to the site as well as links to the article...and the more money for the offending writer. Of course, the fierce backlash had the site rethinking it's pay scale system...or at least its editorial non-oversight. And just as with Marks, Kanazawa used the plight of someone else (in this case, black women) to increase his branding power.
The problem with branding and increasing one's marketability at the expense of others is that there are consequences. Unfortunately, these consequences tend to fall on the maligned as opposed to the maligner. Marks' irresponsible post to his Forbes article only bolsters some readers' stereotypes about inner-city youth. And Kanazawa's stupid "research" just gave fodder to the outright racists who are always ready to pounce on "proof" of their idiotic beliefs.
But to give Marks a break, let's just argue for argument's sake that he wrote with the belief that he was actually helping black youth with his "advice." Well, let me say Mr. Marks that the problem with giving off-the-cuff advice like that, especially when you have actually walked in the boots (or on the bare feet) of the less privileged, that advice comes off as patronizing, paternalistic and less than helpful. Those who have never had to walk a certain path cannot truly map out that path for others.
I recently had a run-in with a commenter who strikes me as equally dense in her privilege. She commented on one of my earlier posts where I took to task a couple of readers seeking "free" downloads of my books on a pirate site. Someone on the site linked to that post and I've received quite a bit of traffic from that link. Anyway, this particular commenter by the name of Katie came onto my site with the privileged attitude that my financial woes weren't due to the piracy but were basically due to the fact that I needed to get off my ass and get an actual job outside of writing. When I told her that I would hardly take advice from someone pirating my book, she responded that she hadn't downloaded my book but was just on the pirate site to download textbooks. She also managed to slam my works as "trumped up Harlequins" and "overpriced fanfiction" even as she reiterated that she was only trying to help me.
See, I figure someone with the privilege of going to school may be young or may have the privilege of being financed by parents or a partner or someone else to help her tide over. For her to assume that I have not looked for full-time or even part-time work shows how out of touch she is with today's economic reality for those of us approaching 50, who have suffered the loss of a full-time job and are without the sponsorship of parents or loved ones. It was personally insulting to me for this woman to accuse me of sitting on my ass just so she could feel better about herself and at the same time divert blame from those illegally downloading my books (which has cut into my profits).
See that's the problem of the privileged. They tend to bloviate and espouse shit a lot of times because they simply don't know what they are talking about. They don't have the map to the rocky roads many of us are travelling because their paths tend to be a little more paved and therefore easier to traverse. With easier paths tend to come less empathy; this fact I am unfortunately discovering.
And that's the problem with Marks' article; he expresses mock empathy for the underprivileged without actually experiencing actual empathy for the underprivileged. I would suggest to Marks and "Katie" that they take off their privileged shoes and walk without them for a while. They'd be surprised how discomforting being without those privileged shoes can be.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 12/14/2011 03:52:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Fandom's Hatred of Black Female Characters
This is something that's bothered me for a while and Racialicious has finally addressed the topic. The venom is almost palpable when it comes to certain characters, especially Tara from True Blood. You can't tell me there's not something going on other than just irritation for a character or storyline. The vitrolic rhetoric sometimes rises to presumed hatred which leads me to suspect racial animosity.
Below is the comment I wrote to the post (as of this posting my comment was still in moderation and had not shown up):
I'm glad to see this topic as the primary focus of a post and not ancillary to other topics. And yes, it's particularly troubling to me. (BTW, you forgot to mention Bonnie of The Vampire Diaries.) I note that one common nexus to the examples offered above is that all of these characters tend to be involved in I/R relationships.
I've seen the venom that is way over the top in the fandom realm and I assume (rightly or not) that many of the fanbase with particularly insignificant pet peeves actually harbor racist sentiments. What's intriguing is that when it's suggested that racism is behind the level of venom, there's a general hue and cry of "I'm not racist." The "fan" will offer that she (and it's often a she) just doesn't like the character or as indicated she doesn't like the way the character is portrayed by the actress. However, when white characters are disliked, it seems to never reach the vitriolic levels as with black characters. I've seen posts by fans (presumably white) who offered to kill Tara themselves for just the smallest infraction. And I mean a heinous death at that. Just read the glee that followed the apparent murder of Tara.
The main issue is that the more progressive assume that only progressives like the same shows. I would offer that probably those who would be comfortable in an aryan nation meeting also watch these same shows and verbalize their sentiments more covertly. After all, it wouldn't do for them to just come out and say "I hate that negress" especially if she's paired with a white male. For the uninformed, just read blogs centered on I/R relationships. The anecdotes alone will give you a clue as to why you see certain sentiments expressed against black characters/actors involved in onscreen I/R relationships.
The main gist (and this is my assumption) is that black women aren't to be shown as viable and sexual competition to mainstream women (esp if the mainstream woman is the main protagonist). I have to be upfront and say that as an author of I/R fiction I've run across sentiments on boards for romance and erotica indicate that they will never purchase a book with a black woman as the heroine b/c "they just can't relate" and it was once suggested on a board that the reader sees these types of pairings as something along the line of a vampire/human or werewolf/human pairing. In other words, not "normal."
So it isn't a stretch to see the same sentiment expressed on fan boards of shows where a black woman is shown as more than just a sassy best friend, a magical Negro or some sort of mammy figure. And lord help her if she's actually sexually attractive.
In other words, we as black women are still seen as the "mules of the world" and if we show our femininity, our attractiveness, our intelligence and our basic humanity, we're lambasted for presuming to be "equal" with other races of women.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 10/18/2011 09:43:00 AMPermanent Link |
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Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Really?
This pic is an example of what can occur when a populist feminist issue, in this case SlutWalk in New York, intersects with racial insensitivity. Read more about it at Racialicious. Obviously this young woman believes she's being progressive. In reality, she's being a dick, which ironically happens with unaware (or outright racist) feminists. All I have to say as a black woman is check your privilege, child.
BTW, I consider myself more of a womanist than a feminist.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 10/05/2011 01:32:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Interracial Romance Literature is Not a "Fad" Genre
This issue has been weighing on my mind for a few months now. It arises from a blog post at Karen Knows Best Blog regarding rubenesque black heroines. It's not the blog post however but rather one of the comments that raised my hackles. Even though the post was written back in May, my mind keeps going back to this particular comment by a reader:
I'm seeing a lot of white male/with black female genre books out there. Is this the new genre replacing werewolf/MM? I believe in love who you want to love but it worries me when writers jump on a bandwagon and flog it to death
The sentiment of this comment is that I/R romance is somehow an outlier genre, much like fantasy genres featuring werewolves and vampires. This sentiment unfortunately bespeaks the mindset of quite a few (but not all) mainstream romance readers who see such a pairing as outside the norm. Yes, the default pairing in romance is usually white/white, with some exceptions allowed to include Native American and Arab lovers. However, these exceptions are allowed as long as the heroine remains white. And that's the problem. I/R is allowable as long as the heroine is someone the mainstream readership can "relate" to. A heroine of color, whether black or asian or native american, is to some readers someone whose skin they just can't get into. They need to fantasize themselves as the heroine and for some reason (or too obvious reasons) some readers just can't or won't imagine themselves as a woman of color (whereas women of color have had to do the reverse as long as there have been romance books).
Yes, there are exceptions where the mainstream readers have entertained a black heroine in an I/R relationship with a white hero, particularly Suzanne Brochmann's popular pairing of Alyssa and Sam in her Troubleshooter series. So, maybe this type of pairing is considered "normal" if the author is someone the reader can relate to.
There have been several posts on this issue at various romance sites over the years where commenters offered that they were hesitant to read black-authored romance because of their sometimes erroneous beliefs that the plotline would be burdened with racial issues. In this day and age, I can guarantee that most black writers of I/R relationships aren't providing pedantic, social rhetoric about the woes of being black. They are simply providing normal, romantic, sometimes erotic sometimes simmering, sometimes fantastical, sometimes contemporary, sometimes urban, sometimes historical, sometimes paranormal, sometimes Christian, sometimes not-so-Christian literature that happens to feature a black heroine and a non-black hero. Because guess what, these pairings reflect the normal pairings that are all around us, pairings that have existed forever and were legitimized in the 1967 landmark case of Loving v. Virginia (ironic name isn't it given the focus of the case).
So, to the commenter, you're seeing a reflection of true life. Actually, contrary to your supposition, the genre is hardly an adequate reflection of true life as there should be more books (not fewer)than are out there to reflect the millions of I/R relationships and marriages. Thankfully, e-book publishers like Loose-Id understand that this is a viable market, albeit not as large as other genres (such as werewolves and vampires), but growing nonetheless.
So, yes there are many authors jumping on the bandwagon as you so put it. But don't worry about the genre being "flogged to death." Trust me, this genre isn't going to become saturated anytime soon. As a matter of fact, I suspect it's destined to be around a long, long time - as long as there's a whole lot of loving going on. Because yes, we black women need our loving too.
Poll: What does Obama and Tiger Woods have in common other than some tangential racial connection? Let's see, one is the President and the other is a golf pro. Their roles overlap how?
Lisa Solod Warren connects two very different men, conflating mistakes and disappointments attributable to both men simply because of their race, conveniently forgetting that ALL DAMN HUMAN BEINGS FUCK UP, but it seems that only minorities are called to task based on their percentages of melanin. Basically, to summarize Warren's misguided and assholery point of view: both Obama and Woods are no longer a "credit to their race," disappointing all us black folk who held them up as "role models." Oh lordy, what is we gonna do without our role models? Why the whole black race is gonna slide down to purgatory. I love it when others tell us who our role models should be.
So let's call this bullshit what it is: racism trying to cloak itself as concern. Big ass fail, Ms. Warren.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 12/14/2009 02:58:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Saturday, December 20, 2008
Another Katrina atrocity
Something the press didn't cover during the Katrina fallout - a free-for-all shooting spree on blacks. Abagond covers the atrocity.
The police were no where to be seen in the week after Katrina hit. They told one guman: “If they’re breaking in your property do what you gotta do and leave them [the bodies] on the side of the road.”
The gunmen were seen as holding the neighborhood together until the army arrived.
Not long afterwards one gunman said, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." One woman said they learned what the n-word meant.
Another woman, whose uncle and two cousins were gunmen, said:
My uncle was very excited that it was a free-for-all - white against black - that he could participate in. For him, the opportunity to hunt black people was a joy.
Seems the MSM was more concerned about those crimes committed by blacks than those done to blacks. Typical.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 10/27/2008 01:45:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Friday, October 24, 2008
Just plain idiocy...or racism
You know how I warned you all that this race was going to get ugly, and with the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh, et al, that wasn't a farfetched conclusion. The covert racism is boiling to the surface, and folks aren't even trying to hide it anymore. Even given these instances, I naively believed there were lines that marginally sane folk wouldn't dare cross; unfortunately, I was wrong.
As soon as I heard about Obama's ailing grandmother, Toots, I half-heartedly joked to myself that the conservative pundits would find a way to somehow accuse Obama of "staging" his grandmother's illness for political points. Again, it was supposed to be a joke. But obviously Chicago's Don Wade of WLS 890's husband-and-wife radio duo, Mornings with Roma and Wade, has his own twisted since of humor. Trying to make a point about how "synchophantic" the press is toward Obama, Wade, an obviously frustrated conservative, proferred a scenario where Obama suffocates his grandmother, and a forgiving press backs off.
And folks, it's going to get even scarier out there as the days count down to November 4. A woman posting at a board I frequent recounted her frightening episode with an angry anti-Obama protestor who decided that trying to run her down with his truck was a valid form of protest. Luckily, her friends pulled her out of harm's way just in time. I'm hearing more and more accounts of voter and canvasser intimidation by anti-Obama freaks; I guess that's why the other side figured they needed a canvassing horror story of their own; just one thing though - the whole thing was bogus, with shades of Susan Smith thrown in.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 10/24/2008 08:13:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Monday, October 06, 2008
The sounds of desperation
You could almost feel sorry for him if he weren't so venal. And wasn't such a liar. Expect the remainder of the campaign to get very ugly as the race-baiting becomes less tacit. In the vid, McCain facetiously asks, "Who is the real Obama." Well, we get a good look at McCain with this Rolling Stones article. It ain't pretty.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 10/06/2008 06:53:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Saturday, October 04, 2008
And the Presidential race gets even uglier...
...and more stupid. I don't want to get simplistic, but it seems as though Republican has come to mean out-and-out racist, although I know that's not true, b/c I know some decent Republicans, some even in my family (yes, black Republicans). Still, when you hear accounts like this FL teacher, you have to wonder.
Understand, there were six black middle school students in his class. I cringe to think how they felt. And that disciplinary action is pathetic. The asshole should be fired.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 9/13/2008 01:15:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Friday, June 13, 2008
The smear campaign against Michelle Obama is hitting its stride
The Fox network has sunk to a new low, but what's to be expected from the race-bating, misogynistic, intellectually- and morally-bankrupt network? In this latest debacle, wingnut Michelle Malkin actually referred to Michelle Obama as Obama's "baby mama" during a conversation with Fox anchor Megan Kelley. Just to stress the point, Fox also ran a graphic at the bottom of the screen.
Lord, when these mainstream "pundits" get ahold of an urbanism, they just want to wear it out! Obviously, these particular microbial underbelly feeders are hoping to appeal to the worst racist assumptions among their pitiful viewers. They want to confuse the already addled minds out there with the implication that no matter a black woman's station in life, no matter if she's an Ivy League alumnus, with several degrees, with a thoughtful, intelligent presence, she is still basically nothing more than a 'ho. That's how the media insists on seeing the majority of black women, and it's sickening and tired. They need a new schtick.
Of course, wingnutty Malkin is trying to make all kinds of excuses for her denigrating reference, including an that Michelle Obama once referred to her husband as her "baby's daddy." Whether it's true or not, the intent of the phrases are vastly different. One could be said to be a cute quip, while the latter is nothing more than a racist slur.
I just have to wonder - what does wingnutty Malkin think her wingnut buddies call her behind her back? Think of any racist Asian perjorative, and I bet you they've referred to her with those particular endearments. One day she's going to have her eyes opened that self-hating doesn't earn you brownie points.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 6/13/2008 02:21:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Sunday, June 08, 2008
Commercials I hate
If you haven't checked out the latest series of Six Flags commercials, then you're missing a lesson in Racist Ads 101 - Going for Old, Tired Stereotypes. In this case, an Asian dude who provides a fun rate-o-meter in a broken "Oriental" (I know, not a PC term, but so fitting here) accent. Check it out below.
If you think they were going for the ole Charlie Chan accent, you'd be correct. Angry Asian Man got the inside scoop from an Asian actor who auditioned for the commercial. He writes:
Recently there has been a Six Flags commercial where they show an Asian man randomly speaking in a stereotypical Engrish accent. I, in fact, did go to the audition for that a few months ago. The casting call said nothing about speaking in a fobby accent. When I got there, the casting guy said stuff like "think about those Charlie Chan movies" "talk like your grandfather." My grandfather was born in the United States! I was so disgusted that I left midway.
The above account reminds me of the infamous scene (although there were many) from Hollywood Shuffle where a white director, looking for an "Eddie Murphy type" tells the Robert Townsend character to act more black: "Stick your {rear end} out and bug the eyes."
Although HS was a parody, unfortunately it's based on truth. That movie came out in the 80's; you would think directors would have progressed beyond that, but judging from the Six Flags account, there's some serious regression going on. C'mon, Charlie Chan?
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 6/08/2008 10:26:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Words can't express the tragedy...
...of how little a black female's life is valued. Thanks to Gina at What About our Daughters and her ceaseless campaigning for the rights of forgotten black women and children - to make sure they don't remain forgotten. Read about the tragedy of Romona Moore and just weep. I did.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 5/07/2008 07:07:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The "Black KKK"
Sports columnist Jason Whitlock puts the truth out there with a forthrightness too many black journalists and commentators lack for fear of "riling up the community." For all the recent outrage about nooses and veiled threats from whites, the truth is that the rising mortality of black men isn't from nooses and white lynch mobs. Black men are dying at the hands of other black men, and those hands are usually holding guns. Whitlock writes about the recent murder of Washington Redskin Sean Taylor:
"Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you're a black man living in America, you've been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.
"...when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That's not some negative, unfair stereotype. It's a reality we've been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.
"When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.
"Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How's that working?"
Not too well, judging by the mortality rate of black males in my own family. I've had three cousins shot and killed by other black men within the last twenty-five years. During the funeral of the first cousin to be murdered in the early eighties, I babysat his two-month old son because I couldn't bear to attend the funeral; thirteen years later that baby boy was shot down as he sat on his porch. That is a legacy no father would ever want to pass down to his son, but in our communities, these tragic legacies flourish from one generation to another as fathers, sons, uncles, cousins are shot down in the streets. Another cousin was shot in the back running for his life after visiting his children's mother; months later, the same men came for her to keep her from testifying. They killed her in front of my cousin's preschool children.
We can get outraged by every tale of white-on-black racism we hear about, but what about the rampant self-hatred within our communities? We're so wary of the beast without the community, we keep forgetting about the threat within - until we're facing the barrel of a gun , as I did in November, 1995. And it wasn't a white man holding that gun.
Whitlock warns: "Rather than whine about white folks' insensitivity or reserve a special place of sorrow for rich athletes, we'd be better served mustering the kind of outrage and courage it took in the 1950s and 1960s to stop the white KKK from hanging black men from trees."
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 11/28/2007 03:52:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Saturday, August 18, 2007
Is this ad racist?
I had to re-iterate Keith Boykin's question here after I came across his post about an Intel advertisement he found in his mail. The ad featured a white man, his arms akimbo, with a smug smile, while several black men are in a bowing position around him. The men purportedly represent sprinters, which was to be a metaphor for performance speed. Well, if Intel meant thsi innocuous message, it quickly got mired in racial implications. Can we even see what Intel is selling here?
The consensus of the commentors over at Boykin's blog is that this ad is racist, although some dissentors say at the most it's just racially insensitive. Well, ok, let's go with the latter premise (although to me this is argument about the varying shades of the same fruit). So the question is how in the 21st century can ad execs be this insensitive to racial politics that they couldn't even see the insinuation of a white "lord" basking over the subjugated black bodies around him? At the least, it harps on stereotypes of white male=brains, black male=muscle.
Another commentor stated that while the ad itself isn't racist, the insinuation of black male bodies as "well-oiled machines" is. Well, this is an ever-present depiction of black men in the media, particularly sports. How can we ignore the fact that "well-oiled machines" are exactly how they are promoted when they are talked up by sports commentators as "powerful", "aggressive", "quick", "naturally athletic." Never "smart", "intelligent", "calculating" or "cunning" which is more likely to be attributed to a white athlete.
How many want to bet that the men (and women) who sat in the marketing meeting and thought this ad was a good idea follow sports closely? How many want to take a guess at the ratio of black men they see on the field to the number of black men (and women) who are seated next to them at work? I have a feeling that the ratio would be slightly if not dramatically skewered.
This ad reminded me of a similar ad I came across over fifteen years ago when I was temping at a bank. I was leafing through a magazine (downtime activity) and came across an ad supposedly pushing some sort of software that was to organize your hard drive to free up space. The ad claimed that the hard drive was a jungle that you had to tame. And depicting this jungle were black natives in grass skirts carrying a white man dressed as the great white hunter in some pallet. My senses immediately said "racist"; to test whether I was being too sensitive, I showed the ad to a white supervisor, half-way expecting him to deny what was before his eyes. But no, even he saw what the ad executives obviously didn't see or didn't care to see, and immediately agreed that the ad was racist.
A few years later, I saw another ad pushing some international phone service where all of the countries were represented by people in their native dress. Africa was represented by a monkey or gorilla. I guess the marketing director decided an african in a Togo shirt would have been more insensitive.
Intel did apologize after the ad blew up in their faces. Again how could they not see what was before their eyes? But again, I guess the real question is how many black engineers, programmers, IT staff, support staff, board members, CEOs, CFOs are employed at Intel? How many are in their marketing department? How many occasions do white employees and executives get to see blacks as their intellectual equals and not just some oiled bodies to be used in servitude?
So again, I ask, is this more than racial insensitivity? Is this ad outright racist in its implication? To put it in another perspective, I use the words of another commentor at Boykin's: "Same ad with a team of all-Middle Eastern or all-Asian men, or all-female runners. Love to see how far that would fly. Not far, I'm guessing."
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 8/18/2007 06:52:00 AMPermanent Link |
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Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Sad if true, but not surprising
I would hope that this was just another case of Internet lore, but my inner cynic says there's more than a little truth to it.
Background: VH1 supposedly was going to produce a show called Interracial Love Reality Show featuring Tobias a white single father of two bi-racial sons. Tobias was seeking a relationship with a black woman and hoped to meet his match through the show, as has happened with other love-match reality shows.
Now, here's where it gets dicey. According to the author and at least one commentor at this site, VH1 was all ready to give the show the go - until they read the treatment and realized that the black woman wouldn't be of the ghettofabulous persuasion. Instead she was to be presented as an educated, intelligent woman who just happened to be seeking a white man to date.
No way, said TPTB. No one wants to see an educated black woman (despite online comments that indicated positive support of the show). The producers obviously expect that America isn't ready for an articulate, attractive black woman who has never snaked her neck or rolled her eyes.
Again, if this all is true, it is very disheartening and sad - but again, given the history of reality TV and its depiction of black women, it's not surprising at all.
