Black Cinderella

I’m against putting POC characters in tales of European origin, because, y’know, historical and ethnic accuracy is an actual thing. It’s folklore and it comes from this or that European culture so, yes, accuracy IS a thing.
BUT. I’m all for making more movies based on mythology and folklore of other cultures, for example, African or Native American ones. This I support, it would be a great thing. Because, in all honesty, no one needs Black or Asian Cinderella, that’s just stupid (and, yes, inaccurate). but everyone needs more tales about a child lost in the forest meeting spirits and forest gods. Or at least lets make a movie using an Asian variant of Cinderella fairy tale, there’s more than one, y’know? Because I’m all for accuracy and I’m all for representing more than one dominant culture in multicultural society.

Are you for real? I bolded the above statements because you know what?



*I* needed a Black Cinderella. And I bet a lot of readers here did, too. We still do.

Because of colonialism, most of us have been force-fed European history, mythology, fairy tales, and Medievalism; told it’s the best, the highest, the only. It’s everywhere we look: movies, cartoons, books, tv shows, and we’re told that this is something you are required to learn, and in some cases, the only context you’re allowed for your imagination, but it’s not really for you. It’s not about you. Because you aren’t “Historically Accurate.”

That can go to hell and so can you. Because you know what? Our histories, once again, because of colonialism, kidnapping, enslavement, genocide, are marginalized, misunderstood, and misrepresented. They’re stolen from us and given to white people considered “more qualified” to tell them, and they make millions of dollars off of those misrepresentations. Entire libraries and histories were purposely, methodically burned in order to disempower people of color. These stories, when they survive, are made illegal to teach, specifically because they empower people of color! People of color are removed from their own stories and their own contexts and replaced with white people, because Ridley Scott “can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such.I’m just not going to get it financed.”

Workshop voor agenten over omgang met Antillianen vol met raciale stereotypen

"Antillianen dwingen respect af door anderen te vernederen"

http://www.amnesty.nl/sites/default/files/public/rapport_etnisch_profileren_ainl_28_okt_2013.pdf

Workshop voor agenten over omgang met Antillianen vol met raciale stereotypen
http://www.nikthemadag.nl/doc/doc/doc/download/files/62-09.pdf
Geweld onder Antillianen: "Respect dwing je af door anderen te vernederen". Onder die kop biedt het landelijk Netwerk voor Innovatie en Kwaliteit (NIK) een workshop aan politieagenten aan die wordt gegeven door medewerkers van de Rotterdamse politie.

Op de site van het NIK wordt de workshop als volgt aan de man gebracht:

De drempel om geweld te gebruiken ligt bij Antilliaanse Nederlanders lager dan bij andere groepen. Expressief geweld wordt gelegitimeerd vanuit een bepaalde gedachtegang, cultuur of mentaliteit. Het afdwingen van respect van anderen, status verwerven binnen de vriendengroep en het leiden van een gewelddadige levensstijl om respect en status te verwerven, zijn aspecten die veel raakvlakken hebben met het leven in een subcultuur. Als een Antilliaan het gevoel heeft niet gerespecteerd te worden, kan dat genoeg aanleiding zijn om de opponent neer te steken of schieten. Door iemand neer te steken of schieten wordt de situatie rechtgetrokken en krijgt de dader respect van de tegenstander.

Black Venus Project (Stereotyping) by Maxim Vakhovskiy

 

Maxim Vakhovskiy

The Jezebel stereotype

The Jezebel stereotype (1630s- ) is one of the main ways white Americans look at black women. It is why so many whites think black women are loose, immoral and oversexed.
Jezebel, named after an evil queen in the Bible, is a loose woman who wants sex all the time. She’s gotta have it. Yet at the same time she uses sex to draw men in to get what she wants. Sometimes it is money. Sometimes it is to destroy them. Many whites read Anita Hill this way. She presented herself as a good Christian woman, but white people are not fooled by that. Hip hop videos and Halle Berry’s Oscar-winning performance in “Monster’s Ball” push this image of black women. Angela Bassett refused the part in “Monster’s Ball” for just this reason.
This image of black women is not based on the latest government findings or anything like that. Nor is it even a simple misunderstanding of what black women are like. Instead it is a sick and self-serving stereotype pushed by slave-masters that has not yet died out.
Slave-masters forced black slave women to sleep with them. Deep down they knew it was wrong, that it was a crime, even if the law allowed it (it did – black women were their property). But instead of telling the truth about themselves, they chose to tell a lie about black women. Black women had no way to call them on it and even white women believed it. It has lasted down to our time, finding new life in Hollywood, starting in the 1970s with blaxpoitation films, and later with hip hop in the 1990s.
Before the 1960s the stereotype was so strong that not a single white man in the South was ever thrown in prison for raping a black woman. Not one. And even now it is a hard thing to make stick.
Before the 1960s the stereotype was so sick that white people made pictures of little black girls who talked or acted like they wanted sex. It was supposed to make you laugh.
Slave-masters gave the stereotype force and life because it covered their crimes, but it did not start with them.
When white men first came to black Africa they saw half-naked women! That part of Africa did not yet have a Christian idea of modest dress. But the whites of the time drew a different conclusion: that black women were loose and wanted sex even more than men did.
So did they? Was there any truth to it? From what slave accounts we have, the slave women who had sex with their masters did it almost always out of fear, not desire.
So the Jezebel thing was a lie.
But it proved to be a useful lie, one that has since taken on a life of its own and will take a long time to root out.