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In color and 'Black and White'

Recently, a small group from the Campus Echo staff went to see ‘Black and White,’ a movie about interracial sex, white wannabees, cultural anthropology and Hip hop.

Afterwards, we went to the Broad Street Diner to discuss the film and the issues it raises. The following is a partial transcription of that conversation. The panel that evening consisted of Ed Boyce, Kim Arrington, Rashaun ‘Ruck’ Rucker, and Phonte Coleman, who are black, and Danny Hooley, who is white.

PHONTE: I thought [the movie] sucked ass.

DANNY: Really? We got that on tape? That’s good.

KIM: I thought that, like, it was a bunch of larger-than-life caricatures. I didn’t see myself in the movie. You know sometimes you feel comfortable seeing a character that’s like yourself in a movie? I didn’t see any one like myself in the movie. It was on a valid point, how America’s embraced Hip-hop culture. It’s an interesting, fascinating topic, but I don’t think the movie clearly and provocatively explored it.

DANNY: Yeah. It kind of reminds me when I saw Higher Learning many years ago. I really thought that film kind of dropped the ball, too, as far as what it promised, and what it actually delivered. It went for the cheap sensationalism -- like skinheads. What the f*ck does that have to do with college life? That’s a bad metaphor for racism in the college system, I think.

PHONTE: ‘Cause racism on college campuses is not that extreme.

KIM: I think [Black and White] oversimplified a lot and appealed to stereotypes. It really played off the sexual -- it came from a sexual standpoint, rather than really going deep. I mean, it was good to an extent, but it was really superficial. It was cool because it talked about a situation that really hasn’t been talked about before. You had white kids, like these high school kids admitting, "Oh I want to be something else, I want to be that," and it was pretty blatant, you know what I’m saying?

DANNY: Yeah, but they didn’t really hang out, you know, with black people.

KIM: Well it also proved that it was a fad, I mean the girl summed it up, Bijou Phillips character.

PHONTE: Yeah, "in a few more years I’ll be doing something else."

KIM: Right, and it’s a fad, and it’s the same thing--

DANNY: You think it’s a fad?

KIM: Yeah.

DANNY: Because I’ll tell you where I come from. I’m what, fifteen years older than you guys. I grew up in North Durham, and when I was a kid, there was no interracial dating. At my school, no f*cking way, man. So you go to the mall in 1975 and you don’t see black and white people hanging out -- not kids, not really. There might be a little interaction the basketball court or whatever, but that’s about it. But now, you know, I go to the mall--

PHONTE: Yeah it’s everywhere now.

DANNY: Interracial dating, you know. I think that from my standpoint, that’s cool, that’s progress. I know that Hip hop has a hell of a lot to do with it.

PHONTE: It does.

DANNY: Race is a sensitive topic, and there’s racial issues that aren’t probably going to be resolved in my lifetime, but, it’s kind of cool to see that kind of progress, even if it is kind of fad-ish.

PHONTE: Yeah, still, it’s happening anyway, I feel that.

KIM: But from the standpoint of an African American female, it can be insulting to know that a white guy is trying to holler just because I am black.

DANNY: Racial objectification is what I call it.

KIM: Well, I mean--

DANNY: It’s just like objectifying a woman for any other physical attribute or whatever.

KIM: Right, it’s because of my skin color, you know, that that’s the reason why, not because -- you know, it’s just different. Like, we were talking about that day in the office, it’s different when a white guy tries to talk to me and a black guy tries to talk to me because I think there is some kind of ulterior motive.

PHONTE: All guys have ulterior motives.

KIM: Well they do, but it seems like that whole, I mean you know the whole, like, master in the slave quarter.

DANNY: You raised this thing once in class when we were in American Lit, when we read that horrible passage from what is it, Faulkner? And the guy sees the black woman bend over--

KIM: Yeah, and it really bothered me, yeah.

DANNY: And you said "I wonder what is going through a white guy’s mind when he looks at me."

KIM: Absolutely.

DANNY: I thought you were in the wrong context there, because this isn’t like 1865, you know what I mean? No one’s looking at you and saying, "I own that!"

KIM: Right, but how do you know? I mean, you can’t be in every white, male--

DANNY: Because I am white, I’m attracted to black women, and I’ve gone out with black women.

KIM: Absolutely, but when there are people who fit a certain redneck stereotype who try to holler, they’re trying to holler because of a stereotype, I mean, and yeah, I was very offended by it.

DANNY: Well how could you not be? How could any sensible person not be?

KIM: And I don’t think that things have changed as much, I mean, they’ve changed, but they haven’t changed as much as everybody wants to think they have.

ED: Some of the characters were real familiar going to public school, like particularly the white girls. I’ve gone to school with girls just like that, from middle school and whatever, rode the bus and whatever, so I thought that was right on, as far as their roles.

DANNY: Do you think it’s like what I just said about racial objectification, because you are black you’re Danger Boy and that makes you exciting?

ED: Not just black, but, sort of ruffneck type.

DANNY: Okay, let me ask you-- there was one prolonged confrontation in the film between black and white. It’s when the black guys come in to the white-owned club that’s on their turf, and sort of start ripping up the place and pointing guns at [the white guys]. How did you all feel about that?

KIM: I mean, I could understand it, because the whole turf thing-- I mean, that’s been a problem in the black community. This sense of others, outsiders, coming in and developing, in our community, and I think that that was, I mean, kind of a hyperbolic way to--

DANNY: Like an act of war.

KIM: Yeah, it was. It was a way of showing that. And I mean, a lot of African American males who have been disenfranchised take back their power in ways like that. I mean, not just silly pointing-the-gun, but in ways where "you are on my turf, now I can get you for everything."

RUCK: The conflict, that was okay, I understand the conflict. But the conflict that was more real-to-life was the [white] studio manager arguing [with the rappers]. That is more real to life racism. And then they bring somebody else in there. You’ve been in situations where you have to bring somebody [white]...

KIM: ... to legitimize what you're saying.

DANNY: I know how that is. I’m old and white. I get away with mad sh*t.

KIM: You really do.

DANNY: I do. I didn’t go to my last however-many phys ed classes because I just didn’t feel like it, or it was -- I should have been dropped. I’ve got like, mad absences, but the [white] teacher didn’t drop me. He just acted like nothing happened, and I wondered how it would have been if I had been black. And I feel a bit of guilt for complicity in that, you know, in a racist system, but sometimes, like today--

KIM: Sometimes you got to milk it. I’m not mad at you.

RUCK: Racism can be so subtle, like when we came in here people probably looked at us like "What the f*ck is [Danny] doing with them?" It’s that type of racism, the racism that you don’t see. It’s still here, but, you, sometimes, I would rather be in a state where you know you’re about to get smacked in the face or letting somebody stab you--

PHONTE: Folk just tell you to off gate: "Nigger, don’t sit here."

KIM: Every character in that movie had an identity issue, and it shows that it’s just not an issue with white people. And also, when they had Bijou Phillips at the end and she was saying "I’m really f*cked up" that was like her epiphany, her recognition of how her life had been.

RUCK: It was when Elijah Wood realized-- it really showed how faddish it was, because, he really didn’t like black people. He was borderline sort of with his girlfriend, because he was like--

DANNY: "These people."

RUCK: "These people." He was like, "you deal with these people?"

KIM: Yo, you know that white boy was brave to go up in their house.

RUCK: Yeah, but that part wasn’t real, not if it was a real person he’d have gotten the sh*t kicked out of him

DANNY: Another thing -- I thought the movie seemed to take a rather dim view of anthropology, you know what I mean? Or social studies, or whatever. You remember when Brooke Shields was pointing the camera at Mike Tyson? and he said: "We’re not animals here."

PHONTE: Yeah I felt that too, man. And how when they were in the club and the man was saying, "It’s just like how they bring tourists to Harlem on the tour bus, and it’s have them looking at you like, you know what I’m saying, you some kind of animal or something, man."

KIM: I totally think that the anthropology subplot was important because that movie was all about anthropology; it was all about the way cultures interact with one another. And, about, I mean, that’s what they were trying to get at, that was what the anthropology came from.

DANNY: I mean, do you think it’s important to study how we interact with each other, and different races, and different cultures?

KIM: I think there needs to be some more -- I mean, I don’t mean to say this in a negative way, but it’s too many white anthropologists. And you bring your biases to that.

RUCK: Because a lot of times you don’t see how sh*t is. Just the other day, I was taking the elevator with two white people and and both of them shied away. That shit actually happens, like, all the f*cking time. I could be dressed to the teeth, like J Crew style, and I still get on the elevator and some white folks will still be like--

DANNY: That’s ‘cause you usually have two guys the same size as you, dressed the same way.

RUCK: I’ve been on the elevator with somebody by myself, and they look at you like you like...

DANNY: Just kidding, man. Yeah, I know.

KIM: But you really don’t know, Danny.

DANNY: Well...

KIM: You know what I mean? Like, just like I don’t really know.

DANNY: I kind of see it. I kind of see how I get treated differently, yes. I think the first step for a lot of white people is that they have to, like, acknowledge their complicity in a racist system, you know. That would be a start.

PHONTE: Yeah, I feel you, man.

DANNY: Because white people, even white people who are well-meaning, are very defensive when you suggest they have complicity in that system.