I recommend that those who haven’t watched Black-ish do so. Many of these same topics get grappled with. I think it is one of the best shows on tv.
@Riversider , you seem to have an extraordinary amount of information about this young woman’s daily life, thoughts, experiences, and so on. Or perhaps it is just that you think you do…
I’m saying no such thing, just sharing my opinion as others did. It’s not like anyone else knows but many seems to think so.
I don’t think experience is the only teacher, and anyway it only teaches you a very narrow subset of the world. A poor black person can become an expert on rich white people, say the British monarchy. A rich white person can understand a lot about being black and/or poor. Why bother to have sociology, anthropology, or history if you can only know what you saw with own eyes?
We can, and should, all learn about others potentially learning even more facts about the big picture, but there’s no learning source that replaces experience.
^Absolutely, but the next best thing to experience is listening to the first hand experiences of others, and hearing a plethora of voices is preferable to a unitary message.
The whole point of the OP is misguided, imo. The actress in question was NOT there to address the issue of what it’s like to be a black youth struggling with extreme poverty. She was there to talk about “Race, Childhood, and Inequality in the Political Realm.”
Apart from her SES status, I think it’s offensive for the OP to decide that this young woman is not “black enough” to weigh in on these issues.
No. It’s not a matter of being black enough, it’s about not experiencing the struggles of the commoners. Just like Paris Hilton is white enough but very removed from average white person’s life experiences. Both have right to their perspective and it must be interesting but on stage I rather see someone who is more exposed to common experiences. Your may not and it’s okay.
She became famous only in her mid teens as an actor in an ensemble show that mostly focusses on the adult characters. I promise you, most of her life she was not rolling in diamonds.( I doubt she is now mega rich. The internet says her net worth is $1 million which is very nice but hardly stratospheric.)
But again, that is not the issue here. As @Nrdsb4 explained just above you, she was not pretending to represent any experiences except of her own and how racism manifests itself in the world of the arts.
And again, you do not get to judge other people’s lives. Yara nor I owe you an explanation of struggles and await your verdict. If we did, that puts you in a position of power of deciding whose voices are heard and whose are silenced. All voices should be heard. The only power you have is in deciding if you want to listen.
edited:
And there is no “average” person. Tell me who is an average white person? The farmer? The suburban working mom? The hotel worker in Alaska? The high school teacher? The welder?
Yes, smacks of judgment.
The point is an open mind.
A science free opinion:
Is it possible that the ability to generalize of off lived experiences was a survival asset for early humans? Eat plants with this shaped leaves; don’t eat those shaped leaves.
However this skill at generalizing doesn’t allow for nuance. When this skill is aimed at society, stereotypes are the result. This desire to categorize and understand actually reveals the opposite. Less understanding, and knowledge is harmed by the short cuts taken.
What do “the struggles of the commoners” have to do with the subject of the conference, which, as we have repeatedly told you, was not commoners and their struggles, but race and the arts? Having been a child actor, Ms. Shahidi is certainly qualified to talk about her experience as a child actor compared to the experience of white child actors. If you believe that child actors can’t be “commoners,” then no “commoner” could talk about being a child actor. But she could.
Generalizing by race may be bad, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. And therefore, we should understand what happens when people treat other people differently because of their race.
“Kumbaya, I treat everyone the same regardless of race.” Yeah, maybe, but most people don’t. And most people who say they treat everyone the same regardless of race actually don’t treat everyone the same; they just think they do.
However, one has to be careful to note whether an individual experience is representative or an outlier, or whether following the procedure based on an individual experience may reliably work in the future.
I think we could head to an interesting discussion I’d bet the intersection of race and the arts could be thought provoking But we’re already skirting with what night belong on the one “race” thread.
The issue with stereotypes includes the partition you set up between us and them. Or them of one sort and them of another. Not good, for us mere observers. Leave the categorizing to theorists, statisticians, social scientists and psychologists.
I looked for reporting or a transcript of what Ms. Shahidi said, or indeed what anyone said at this conference. But I couldn’t find one.
I’d love to know what the architect said.
Fang, sometimes, we pat ourselves on the head for our own liberal awarenes and openness. But I think we can hardly pretend to know what others experience. Even Harvard profs have reported what they or their kids go through, in Cambridge, of all places (not referring to th arrest issue a few years ago. It’s more than that.)
The arts are an interesting area where I suspect race is not a limiter, in itself. Supplies, etc, cost, but many have made forms of art not dependent on big expenses.
And “the arts” includes the acting realm.
So, I hope we can get past the judgment passed on this one young woman.
It seems to me quite likely that black actors are treated differently than white actors, for example restricted to certain roles and paid less. It also seems to me quite likely that black artists trying to get funding are treated differently than white artists. After all, we know from resume experiments and apartment-leasing experiments that black applicants are treated differently than white applicants, so why would it be different for black artists?
Seems like this is a common complaint by non-white actors, since race-generic roles historically tended to be limited to white actors, while non-white actors were typically cast only in race-specific or race-related roles.
More aand more, you can see Black actors in traditionally “white” roles. No, you don’t see a white person playing a black character. But there isn’t supposed to be an SES factor: that a rich Black can’t play a poor Black character. Or vice versa.
I think this thread may be getting twisted on itself. Most of us, I think, don’t want to see minorities qualified by external judgments.