"Even as we each embrace our own beautiful, unique, and valid versions of our blackness. Remember the tie that does bind us as African Americans
And that is our particular awareness
- of injustice
- and unfairness
- and struggle
That means we cannot sleepwalk through life
We cannot be ignorant of history
We cannot meet the world with a sense of entitlement
~ President Barack Obama
Commencement Speech, 2016
But blackness is real. Being a Black American is a real thing. You know what else is real? Whiteness and white racial perspective.
EXHIBIT A: SLEEP WALKING THROUGH LIFE
Saldana 2013
"I find it uncomfortable to have to speak about my identity all of the time, when in reality it’s not something that drives me or wakes me up out of bed everyday....
I literally run away from people that use words like ethnic. It’s preposterous! To me there is no such thing as people of color cause in reality people aren’t white. Paper is white. People are pink, it’s a bit ridiculous when I have to explain to a human being, that is an adult like I am, that looks intelligent but for some reason I have to question his intelligence and explain to him as if he was a two year old, my composition in order for him to say, “Oh I guess I can chill with you, I can work with you.” I will not underestimate a human being and I will not allow another human being to underestimate me. I feel like as a race, that’s a minute problem against the problems we face just as women versus men, in a world that’s more geared and designed to cater towards the male species.
SALDANA 2015
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| Saldana's Reasoning As Evidence of White Socialization |
If we question why Michael has been cast to play the Human Torch in Fantastic Four then we must also question why Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra, why Angelina Jolie played Mariane Pearl in a Mighty Heart, why Laurence Olivier played Othello, Burt Lancaster in Apache, and the list goes on....and on....
You know what? White people, Zoe Saldana, and very few others try to compare these particular apples and oranges.
The Human Torch was a cartoon character created in United States during a more overtly racist time period. Now that 1960s white comic book heroes moving from comic books to 21st century movies, black and brown people are being added to the casts -- something that wouldn't be necessary if white racism hadn't eliminated black and brown people from comics in the first place.
Some black people, as we are not monolithic, may not agree with changing the Human Torch into a black character. That's neither here nor there. But it's pretty much only white people and Zoe Saldana that do not understand casting white people as black and real brown people and characters like "Othello", even using black face to do it, is a facet of white supremacy.
EXHIBIT C:
MEET THE WORLD WITH A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT
SALDANA 2016
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| The other side of white washing a movie Finding black actresses that aren't too black, even when the actress is playing Nina Simone |
Two months after Zoe Saldana's movie "Nina" flopped at the box office, just like the movies " "Exodus:Gods and Kings," " Aloha," and "Gods of Egypt" before it, Saldana decided to give an interview to a magazine to shout about her blackness to the world.
Please note that Saldana did not go to EBONY Magazine to do this interview on her blackness
Nor did Saldana did not go to ESSENCE Magazine to do this interview on her blackness
Saldana did not go to VIBE, JET, BET or even mostly white OPRAH Magazine to do an interview on her blackness.
Nope. Saldana took her new blackness to the very nearly entirely white ALLURE Magazine --which, I believe, has a relatively new Asian Editor. If she is new and Asian, shame on her. She hasn't made a dent in the magazines overwhelming whiteness judging by her willingness to showcase Saldana's mixture of arrogance and ignorance on race in general and being a black woman specifically.
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| A couple of brown dots here and there. But mostly white females adorn these magazine covers. Judge the styling of Saldana's photos for yourself |
"The very idea that Saldana could be considered too pretty to play Simone seems to make the actress more sad than defensive.
"I never saw her as unattractive. Nina looks like half my family!" she says. "But if you think the [prosthetic] nose I wore was unattractive, then maybe you need to ask yourself, What do youconsider beautiful? Do you consider a thinner nose beautiful, so the wider you get, the more insulted you become?"
Did you know that Halle Berry was once told that she was too beautiful to play a slave?
Can you guess who it might have been that told Halle was too beautiful to play a slave.? (I'll give you a hint. It's the demographic who likes to pretend white massa wasn't raping and producing bi-racial children by the boat loads from the beginning of slavery until well past the official end of slavery.)
You get three guesses at who told Halle Berry she was too beautiful to play a slave. Was it...
A) Black Women
B) Asian Men
C) White People
Can you guess who it might have been that told Zoe she was too beautiful to play Nina, that the issue was that the nose prosthetic is ugly -- and that this is why people object to her playing Nina Simone?
Three choices
A) Black Women
B) Asian Men
C) White People
Can you guess who it is Zoe hangs around with, is socialized by, day in and day out for most of her life?
Three choices
A) Black Women
B) Asian Men
C) White People
The answers are likely. C,C,C
(We won't talk about some of the black men in Hollywood, never seen with anything darker than a paper bag. That's a different story for a different day)
(We won't talk about some of the black men in Hollywood, never seen with anything darker than a paper bag. That's a different story for a different day)
Do you know who black women should be yelling at over doing something as ignorant as wearing black face and a nose prosthetic to play a black icon like Nina Simone?
A white woman.
Do you know who black people should be(are) arguing with over using black face just like white characters did 60 years ago when the United States more overtly racist?
White people
Thousands, if not millions of black women have been screaming one thing at Saldana: You do not put on black face to play a black woman that having problems being accepted in her own country due to how black she was, how dark-skinned she was, and how black her features were.
But what does Zoe think the issue is?
That OTHER PEOPLE THINK
she's too beautiful
she's too beautiful
(because of her white features)
Conclusion: Zoe Saldana has been socialized to be a white girl. Rachel Dolezal was as well. Biology is not the issue as far as either one's claims to being a black woman. Neithr one gets that. One is as ignorant as the other from opposite sides of the same coin.
In her interviews on race, at the very least, Saldana portrays herself as thinking, acting, talking, and entitling herself to anything she sees and wants just like the liberal white racists among white people.
In her interviews on race, at the very least, Saldana portrays herself as thinking, acting, talking, and entitling herself to anything she sees and wants just like the liberal white racists among white people.
Read More:
http://www.allure.com/celebrity-trends/cover-shoot/2016/zoe-saldana-interview
To me, Saldana's latest interview makes it even clearer that she thinks it is her skin color that automatically gives her the right to call herself a black woman. But she's wrong.
Race is not biology.
While I see claiming black racial identity as a personal choice, it ought to be based on your black experience as a black person and not what's convenient for you when you are about to star in a movie or when you want to add legitimacy to your running a NAACP Chapter, among other things
Saldana has denied race and blackness in a way that sounds very much like colorblind racism, which is often anti-black. She talks about racist acts as if they are not racist, denies the acting out of racism (the acts of others and her own) all as if she's a white woman herself. Either she thinks her fitting into the white beauty aesthetic is why BLACK PEOPLE think she is too pretty play Nina Simone OR she has only consulted white people who think she's not right to play Nina Simone because she's too pretty.
"There's no one way to be black," she says quietly and slowly, clearly choosing her words carefully. "I'm black the way I know how to be. You have no idea who I am. I am black. I'm raising black men. Don't you ever think you can look at me and address me with such disdain."
"There is no one way to be black." This statement is absolutely true. But you can turn anything into a cliche'. And she's done that with "There's no one way to be black." However there are a bunch of ways to act out whiteness (and white colorblind racism at that) and Zoe Saldana has touched on a few of them.
To me, it's clear that Zoe Saldana has been socialized as a white person complete with denials of the various facets of white supremacy. And as far as her claims of raising black men go? I hope she renames one of her children Tiger and the other one Woods.
Again this is not about her biology.
President Obama has a white parent and does not have her problem. He's was even raised by white people and yet he's still clearly black and accepted as black. Jesse Williams has a white parent and does not share her problem. He's black. Halle Berry has a white parent and does not share Saldana's problem. She's black. Zendaya is accepted as black. There are even biracial people who don't necessarily identify as "Black," that identify as "bi-racial" instead that do not share the problem of having been socialized into being a mildly racist white person.
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| Zendaya, Jesse Williams, Thandie Newton |
And all of these black biologically bi-racial people have done and said things that other black people do not agree with -- just as famous black people with two black parents have. Yet they are accepted as part of us, as black, as people that don't deliberately steal from and degrade us while NOT US as Zoe did when she made "Nina" in black face.
That is, who Saldana talks to, hangs out with, and learns life from is creating a very white problem for her -- unawareness of her own belief in, and reinforcement of, white supremacy.
Zoe Saldana thinks the main issue is that we don't know who she is. It's clear to me that she doesn't know who we are, who black people are. She's saying she belongs to us, to our group, and then hasn't got 1/2 an ear to listen to what we, supposedly the ones she would call "sister" and "brother" are saying to her about using black face to play Nina Simone.
She went to a white magazine to have her say about her blackness so as to get support from white people, the ones whose opinion counts on blackness.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
I'm pretty sure I'm ready to boycott any movie with her in it. No more "Star Trek" for me, I think.
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