"Only when things happen to white people do the issues get taken seriously." - Harvey Stubbs
I don't go around looking for racism, it just turns out that there's alot of it to be found all over the place. All you have to do is open your eyes. Sometimes it's covert and subliminal, other times it's not.
Take "True Blood" for example: No matter what the white characters do on that show, they're always given a redemption arc to maintain their dignity and grace. Blonde-haired protagonist Sook...ie Stackhouse sleeps with a thousand men per season, yet she's consistently made out to be a virginal pure idol who must be protected and preserved at all cost while her black second-fiddled best friend Tara Thornton is portrayed as a loud, violent, and damaged psychopath from a broken home who, in turn, nobody is attracted to.
Or how about Tara's cousin Lafayette? That character's image is tarnished season after season as a low-moraled, drug dealing, sexually-overindulgent schemer while his white drug customer Jason Stackhouse finds himself carrying out justice as a prestigious officer of the law even though he, too, engages in the same overindulgent behavior as the character of Lafayette does. Of course, Jason is the only one in the equation who is idolized or viewed as "cool" by the audience despite his reckless behavior. Then, again, the character is written that way by the writing staff, so who's truly to blame?
To go further, when viewed in a pre-retconned context, Sookie and Jason's parents are explained away as having been killed in a tragic flood which occured during their children's adolescence, hence their absence in the present narrative, while Tara and Lafayette's respective sets of parents are absent (save for Tara's recovering alcoholic mother) simply out of negative stereotypical normality when it comes to the way that black culture is viewed in America. When contrasted, only the Stackhouses were written to be sympathized with. Accident?
I don't go around looking for racism, it just turns out that there's alot of it to be found all over the place. All you have to do is open your eyes. Sometimes it's covert and subliminal, other times it's not.
Take "True Blood" for example: No matter what the white characters do on that show, they're always given a redemption arc to maintain their dignity and grace. Blonde-haired protagonist Sook...ie Stackhouse sleeps with a thousand men per season, yet she's consistently made out to be a virginal pure idol who must be protected and preserved at all cost while her black second-fiddled best friend Tara Thornton is portrayed as a loud, violent, and damaged psychopath from a broken home who, in turn, nobody is attracted to.
Or how about Tara's cousin Lafayette? That character's image is tarnished season after season as a low-moraled, drug dealing, sexually-overindulgent schemer while his white drug customer Jason Stackhouse finds himself carrying out justice as a prestigious officer of the law even though he, too, engages in the same overindulgent behavior as the character of Lafayette does. Of course, Jason is the only one in the equation who is idolized or viewed as "cool" by the audience despite his reckless behavior. Then, again, the character is written that way by the writing staff, so who's truly to blame?
To go further, when viewed in a pre-retconned context, Sookie and Jason's parents are explained away as having been killed in a tragic flood which occured during their children's adolescence, hence their absence in the present narrative, while Tara and Lafayette's respective sets of parents are absent (save for Tara's recovering alcoholic mother) simply out of negative stereotypical normality when it comes to the way that black culture is viewed in America. When contrasted, only the Stackhouses were written to be sympathized with. Accident?
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