cross-posted from Paradoxes and Paradigms
I admit it freely, I am all too guilty of being a Top Model fan. Beyond that, I'm all too guilty of being a Tyra Banks lover. And beyond that, I'm ALL too guilty of spending weekday mornings (when I can) watching the Tyra Show.
Many remember Tyra's personal act of beauty analysis a few years ago, when she spent a day walking around in a fat suit and prosthetics, experiencing first-hand the oppression of large women. After this endeavor, Tyra was criticized greatly. I compare these criticisms to those I've heard from skeptics of my college's Homelessness Awareness Week. Throughout this week, students sleep in cardboard boxes outside of the campus' chapel. They cannot shower unless a shower is offered to them, they cannot eat unless food is given to them, and they may not ask for anything from anyone. But at the end of this week, the students shower, eat big plates of food, and sleep in their heated dorms. They cannot fully experience this oppression or truly understand it when they know they will go back to their privilege when it's all over. Critics believe this to also be true of Tyra's experience. But can we not give credit where credit is due? These students, and in that situation Tyra, have their hearts open to attempt to understand. They crave a spiritual communion with their oppressed brothers and sisters and others, and want to experience what they do, if not only for a short period of time.
(While that was a bit of a tangent, I promise it comes back to the title.)
What's great about Tyra is that she's not just action, but with some theory behind it. She uses the Tyra Show for things like talking to Miley Cyrus about the new Hannah Montana movie, and bring super stud Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame, but also uses it to address certain issues in the fight for justice. In the instance of this post, it is the issue of finding identity and abandoning prejudices when living as mixed race.
We are first introduced to a woman named Jenna. Jenna has a Black mother, and a White father. She is quite apparently dark-skinned, and would be recognized as Black to any outside observer. However, Jenna identifies as White, and hates her Black side. She carries around a Confederate rebel flag, and did a photo shoot with friends where they dressed up like members of the KKK.
We then meet Tabitha. Tabitha is Latina and White, but identifies strictly as Latina. She feels that White people are close-minded and judgmental (a bit hypocritical, I feel). Tabitha grew up in a small, White-only town, and remembers being the only Brown girl in her high school.
We move on to Giselle. Giselle is Puerto Rican and Black, but identifies only as Black. She was raised by her Black mother, and never knew her Puerto Rican father, his culture, or his side of the family. Puerto Rican women in her predominantly Puerto Rican community tell Giselle that she doesn't know Spanish, so she can't be really Puerto Rican.
Continuing on, Tyra introduces 3 women of greatly varying skin tones, all of whom are 100% African-American. The 3 women, as well as an African-American woman in the audience, continue on to talk about who is oppressed more, dark-skinned African-American women, or light-skinned.
After this Tyra brings out the issue of confusing nationality rather than race. Through these confusions, the women develop prejudices towards the nationalities they are confused for.
In the end, Tyra made a point of stating that these women have more in common than they thing. While they are arguing over who is more oppressed or who receives more flack for their skin tone, their nationality, their race, they ignoring the fact that they should be standing together in solidarity.
For example, I have several transgendered friends. It is quite possible that they fall victim to oppression more often than myself, identifying as a queer woman. But it's not a topic of conversation. We share a connection because we share the solidarity.
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I'd like to chime in on being a Tyra fan. Gloria Steinem she's not, and I don't think she'll be teaching any college courses, but not everyone HAS to achieve that level of intellectualism. For instance, she went with an adult woman (20's, 30's?) while that woman got her first ever pelvic exam. Was it schticky and a little too Day Time Television? Yes. But did she remind women that pelvic exams are important, even if they make you uncomfortable? I think if Tyra manages to raise awareness of important issues between fluff interviews and stunts, that's a net gain.
"But can we not give credit where credit is due? These students, and in that situation Tyra, have their hearts open to attempt to understand."
Did those kids go around supporting a system that causes people to be homeless, and causes homeless people more pain? Tyra might have made a (incredibly misguided, condescending, and ignorant) attempt to understand fat women, but she supports the fashion industry and the incredibly unattainable beauty standards it holds.
The Tyra show is so hot and cold. One minute she is telling women to be proud of their weight and curves.
The next minute she is shaming Top Models for being too fat, too skinny, too this or too that.
Instead of helping women find feminism, it seems that she is just going to confuse the fuck out of them.
Speaking as an African American person who had a White father, I really am very uncomfortable with a lot of folks who talk about being "biracial".
Race is not a scientific concept - it's political.
And, in America, thanks to the way slavery worked in this country, anybody with any visible Black ancestry is considered to be African American.
Now, there are a lot of lightskinned Blacks who find that hard to swallow - they know how hard life is for African Americans, and they desperately want to be White.
So, they overidentify with their White side - and try desperately to distance themselves from their African American heritage.
[Actually, you see this a lot from middle class and wealthy African Americans of all complexions - they do not want to be identified with working class and poor African Americans, and are really upset when Whites think of them as being the same as "ghetto" Blacks are]
That's why you have the whole "biracial" or "grey" movement - of lightskinned Blacks with White ancestry who desperately want to be considered not Black (you see this a lot among lightskinned Black college students).
My late brother was like that - from middle school on, he tried to distance himself from Blacks and to identify with Whites.
And it was understandable - we were "the first"* in our neighborhood, and he was 4 years older than me, so he got hit full force with the racism of his White peers.
And, when other African Americans followed us to the neighborhood (and our White neighbors frantically fled to Whiter communities on the other side of the Queens/Nassau county line) he had to deal with the resentment that lightskinned Blacks commonly get from darkskinned Blacks.
So, he started cutting school to hang out with White punk rockers on the Lower East Side.
Of course, they let him hang out with them because he was - a big Black guy, who could protect them from being cheated in drug deals!
They never accepted him as one of them - they just saw him as a "special" Black guy who was "different than the rest of them" and who could protect them from the "dangerous" Blacks because of his size.
The same thing happened in art school - he desperately wanted to be accepted as White by his White classmates, but they saw him as a big Black guy who could protect them when they went out to buy drugs and/or could be their errand boy who could go out and buy their drugs from the other "dangerous" Black people.
In the end, he dropped out of art school to become a part time bouncer at a White bar (because, of course, the White college kids were scared of the big Black man, so they never talked back to him like they might do to a White bouncer) and a full time drug dealer.
It took him until his 38th birthday to realize that yes, he was African American, no matter how much Irish and Swedish blood flowed in his veins, and that White America would never accept him as one of them, no matter what.
Unfortunately, all those years in the drug world took it's toll - and he died in 2006 at age 41, from massive organ failure related to long term methamphetamine use.
So, no, really, I do NOT identify as "biracial".
With all due respect to my dad's side of the family (who, in their defense, are the least racist White people I know) I'm an African American who had a White father.
* "the first" - the first African American people in a place, job or institution
I identify as biracial, as being half Chinese, half White. If I'm filling out a survey, I check "other" and write that in. I really identify with my father's (white) family, with the family stories and the heirlooms and enjoy reunions. I also really identify with my mother's (Chinese) side and her family stories about paper sons, and eating the food and going to Chinese weddings (fun!). But it's true that because I didn't grow up in a town with a strong Chinese, or even Asian, population and don't speak any Chinese (though I'm taking classes), that provides a barrier that doesn't let me fully identify as Chinese, or even American-Chinese. Also, I'm often taken as white at first glance, especially by non-Asian people. Asians usually know I'm half (and then ask, "half what?" lol). Yet, I would *never* be comfortable with pretending to be all white, even though I could probably get away with it, because I love my mother and her family so much.
So, anyway, I personally identify as biracial because I *do* identify with both my parents' families who are of two different races and cultures and have different understandings of the world. It's not a word I use to exclude either of my heritages, but instead seems to me, personally, more inclusive.
As for Tyra, it is nice that she occasionally includes some deeper topics of conversation that you might not always see on mainstream tv.