Look Beyond Skin Color

When you look at this picture, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Do you admire Beyonce's hair? Are you thinking, "damn Idris is fiyonnneee!" I'm at a mental point now where my first reaction was to roll my eyes. Because what I saw was Hollywood playing on black women's emotional reaction to the premise of this film.

I'm tired, y'all.

I'm tired of seeing things that others don't see. It'd be a very long discussion or blog post for me to explain to another sista how I arrived at that split-second conclusion. It'd be another futile effort to reason with a sista not to support films that portray you in a negative light. It'd be a waste of energy to rationalize why Hollywood should not receive our recession-starved or economically-stimulated dollars for playing on our insecurities (losing the Good Black Man to the evil, crazy White Girl Hoe; and no matter how things look, stand by your man, girl! *snaps for the kid*).

So what's an overly-opinionated, good-intentioned, passionate black women and girls supporter supposed to do when she gets tired?

Its like, the majority of us sistas don't, won't, refuse to 'get it'. That the 'small things' are bigger than they seem, that our image is everything. That the more we allow the image of the 'strong', righteous, will-kick-a-white-girl's-ass-for-touching-my-man image to circulate, the less we are seen as warm, loveable, REAL women. The easier it is for others in majority society to dismiss us. The easier it is for Tyler Perry to continue with his drivel (ok TP doesn't really relate to this post, I just finished reading a series of posts over at What About Our Daughters that set me off...) Its just like Steve Harvey says, people treat you a certain way because you allow it. Why do we keep allowing, supporting these negative images of us?

(And I'm not happy that two of my fellow FAMU alumni are behind this film...)

There's an argument that if we don't like the images that are circulated about us, we should circulate our own images. For most of us that's extremely difficult. Hollywood isn't accepting that... for now... but we can MAKE them accept what we want by boycotting films with negative portrayals of black women. We can hit them where it hurts. After all, its not about black or white but about green. So lets stop paying to look bad.