‘Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls’: When Satire Meets Reality [#Feminist Friday]
As I went through my habitual morning routine of checking all of my social media hubs for today’s links in social commentary, I came upon the latest response video to the hugely popular “Shit Girls Say,” Franchesca Ramsey’s ( a.k.a. Chescaleigh’) “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls.”
The two minute video finds Franchesca, a young Black woman wearing a blonde wig in character as a White girl, in various locations talking to the camera, saying things that White girls have been known to say to Black girls.
I watched the clip, laughed, as I recognized in it many familiar comments I’ve had directed at me, and proceeded to post it to my Tumblr blog, to share it with my followers. Ten minutes after I posted the video, it had already received over 300 notes and continued to grow. The comments ranged from: ‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this” to “Genius!” to “This is my life.”
Is it a surprise that the video would strike a chord with so many people? Not if you are indeed a Black girl. If you’re a Black girl, you’ve undoubtedly heard (or at the very least heard of) the “Shit” said in the video plenty of times before. You probably laughed and nodded knowingly while watching the clip, thinking to yourself “yeah, definitely been there.”
The fact is that heinous as they may be, ignorant and racist commentary can serve to create a collective experience for POC. Our skin colors, varied as they may be, come with a certain shared sense of knowing when it comes to marginalization. Not all of us are in possession of the critical tools needed to recognize, name or fight the offending commentary, but whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we all experience it, be it slightly or blatantly.
It’s this shared sense of knowledge that allows us to watch a satirical video like “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls,” recognize our lives in it and laugh, while still acknowledging the sad truth that the reason a video like this even exists is because we live in a society in which White girls don’t acknowledge (or choose not to, in some cases) the offensive nature of what they perceive to be harmless descriptors such as “ghetto,” which the blonde Franchesca uses in the video. It is the same society in which White people have to actually be told that no, they can’t touch your hair and no, they can’t wear blackface, not even on Halloween. The very same society in which: “You can say the “N” word, but I can’t? How is that OK?”—as asked by Franchesca’s White girl character— is an actual question asked genuinely by many White people with no understanding of the significance of co-opting language for their own purposes.
The video’s success lies in its central focus on the “othering” nature of White girls’ commentary when it comes to Black girls. When White is society’s default setting, the rest of us are always an “other.” “Ghetto” becomes a synonym for undesirable, and all language—even hurtful words, laden with historically negative significance—becomes fair game. While “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls” may seem like a simple comedic video to give us all a good chuckle in an “LOL White People” meme kind of way, it also serves—as does all good satire—as scathing commentary on privilege and its ties to language. Satire at its best is both educational and comical; an often tough balance to master, and when you have the volatile issues of racism and marginalization to tackle, the task becomes ever more difficult. In this case, while we’re all laughing, maybe some of Franchesca’s viewers should be taking notes because the video could just as easily have been titled “Shit White Girls Should Never Say to Black Girls.”
- Fatima (@F_Garda)
favorite part:
The fact is that heinous as they may be, ignorant and racist commentary can serve to create a collective experience for POC. Our skin colors, varied as they may be, come with a certain shared sense of knowing when it comes to marginalization. Not all of us are in possession of the critical tools needed to recognize, name or fight the offending commentary, but whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we all experience it, be it slightly or blatantly.
It’s this shared sense of knowledge that allows us to watch a satirical video like “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls,” recognize our lives in it and laugh, while still acknowledging the sad truth that the reason a video like this even exists is because we live in a society in which White girls don’t acknowledge (or choose not to, in some cases) the offensive nature of what they perceive to be harmless descriptors such as “ghetto,” which the blonde Franchesca uses in the video. It is the same society in which White people have to actually be told that no, they can’t touch your hair and no, they can’t wear blackface, not even on Halloween. The very same society in which: “You can say the “N” word, but I can’t? How is that OK?”—as asked by Franchesca’s White girl character— is an actual question asked genuinely by many White people with no understanding of the significance of co-opting language for their own purposes.
and yes, even as a mixed woman this happens to me (perhaps moreso because they don’t see my ‘black side’).
Psychology Today: Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?
(snipped)It’s because they’re black! What?!
Seriously, though, call me racist if you want, but it’s simple evolution. They’re lower on the evolutionary chain than everyone else. Bestiality is still illegal! Lol, I’m not that racist, but it is a legit article.
OK, I’ll call you racist. But that’s almost a little demeaning to casual racists, the kind who don’t promote non-white employees or cross the street when they see a POC coming toward them. You are way worse. You honestly believe that Black people - who are all genetically identical to you, minus the genes that code for a select few physical traits - are “lower on the evolutionary chain.” WHAT. EVEN.
You ARE that racist, this is NOT a legit article (it was written by a professor of marketing, FYI), and evolutionary biology is total bullshit 99.99% of the time, especially when it conveniently backs up your preconceived and completely biased world views.
Call me whatever you want, I know who I am. Having an interest in biology isn’t racism. I love Obama, adore your tumblr, and have black friends; I have nothing to prove to you. I believe in equal rights as much as any buckwild democrat, but black people are not genetically identical to other races of human. Every species has genetic variation that classifies it into different breeds, races, whatever. There are key differences between them and us. Whether you find them attractive or not generally depends on your race, but in nature it is uncommon for creatures to breed with creatures of a difference, even a slight one, in genetic makeup. whether the article is legitimate or not, my point is still valid.
ps, I’m jewish and you can tell by my DNA ;)
what is this fuckery? race is a social construct.
It would appear that White people have a problem with Black people who watch Def Poetry Jam
It would appear that White people have a problem with Black people who rock that Oxford English Dictionary swag.
It would appear that White people have a problem with Black people who eat free range fried chicken and organic locally sourced watermelon.
Apparently, I’m not allowed to be a Huxtable. Unless I want to be The Enemy.
I can’t have four eyes and thick lips. I have to make concessions.
I can’t have a college degree and an afro? I have to choose?
It would appear that White people have a problem with Black people, when Black people are not a part of the fictional monolith that is their imperialistic racial fantasy.
i have no racial identity. it’s freeing and lonely at the same time.
10 Ways That the Birthers Are an Object Lesson in White Privilege
squee-gee:feministslut:fuckyeahfeminists:
Click to read the whole thing. It’s really good. Here’s just some excerpts with my emphasis added.
1. Just as Pat Buchanan did with Justice Sotomayor, the Birthers have sullied President Obama as being an unqualified, “affirmative action” candidate. His academic and professional accomplishments are irrelevant. The fact that he won an open and honest election are unimportant. We should know at this point that the life successes of people of color (and to a lesser degree some women) are always questionable and suspect when viewed through the gaze of Whiteness (and sexism).
2. Naturally, the President should be White. Of course, the leaders of trade and industry should be White. The natural order of things equates being White and male with having natural authority and ability—a set of traits which exist without question or doubt regardless of competence or ability. Whiteness deems the inverse for people of color. As President Obama has learned, by mere fact of his birth, and coincidence of the color of his skin, his legitimacy will always be in doubt.
3. Whiteness equals authority. Thus, any White person, at any time, can question the accomplishments of a person of color. The most mediocre of White people, the sum total of whose life has amounted to 1/100th of President Obama’s successes (or that of other people of color) can feel legitimate in questioning how the latter came to find their “unnatural” position in the social hierarchy. Whiteness is an advantage in the marathon of life.4. …Whiteness is also the freedom to be utterly unreflective regarding the foolishness and madness of one’s deeds and statements as long as the target of such madness is the Other. The Birthers, Buchanan, Trump, Palin, Bachmann, Limbaugh, Breibart and Beck engage in routine crazy talk. But Whiteness allows them to be taken seriously (at least at first) for White privilege allows the luxury of being utterly unreflective in most things.5. White privilege is freedom from accountability. Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan, and the rank and file Birther brigands will not face any consequences for their ill deeds in slandering the President of the United States, or for openly fomenting sedition and rebellion against the government of the United States.6. The Obama birth certificate debacle has exposed how to be truly American a person must be White. This is one of the central unspoken (and widely accepted) truths of race in America….America is a mulatto culture where the majority of black folks (and of course our Native American brothers and sisters) were in the U.S. many decades (if not at least a century) before the great unwashed masses of white ethnics arrived here, Whiteness still imagines African Americans and other people of color as semi-permanent outsiders. In total, to be American is to be Black. The Birthers in their racial heliocentrism—where to be White is to be the center of the world—are repulsed by this fact.7. White privilege is the ability to be “normal” and “invisible.” Whiteness is never interrogated…Because Whiteness is invisibility it works like chaff to obscure the obvious fact that much of the opposition to President Obama has always been about his race and not about policy. The signs at the Tea Parties are ignored or explained away, the racist emails laughed at and/or minimized as trite and silly, and bigoted White folks who display their bonafides whenever given the opportunity are labeled as outliers.8. Whiteness is the default position for viewing the world. It is a cognitive map and means of processing reality. The election of Barack Obama upsets this world view.9. Whiteness is the ability and power to reframe reality. Despite whatever documents or evidence that President Obama may offer to silence the growly, rabid hostility of the Birthers and the White Conservative Soul, the terrain for debate will be continually shifted.10. White privilege is also surprising. Many black and brown folks (as well as others) have been saying from day one that the opposition to President Obama, and the silliness suggested by the conspiranoid Birthers in particular, have been motivated by racism. Those voices were often silenced and attacked as being too sensitive and wedded to some outmoded notion of political correctness.
