{"id":573,"date":"2010-06-01T12:10:33","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T17:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcdistrictdiva.com\/?p=573"},"modified":"2010-06-01T12:10:33","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T17:10:33","slug":"does-sex-and-the-city-hate-brown-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/does-sex-and-the-city-hate-brown-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Does "Sex and the City" Hate Brown People?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/dt>\n
We like the color black…you Black people, though? Questionable…<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

I must say I am surprised at all of the people who have been \u201cshocked\u201d and \u201cdisappointed\u201d that the Sex and the City 2 movie did not live up to expectations.\u00a0 For everyone who asked why the movie was so insensitive to Muslim culture, I \u201ccouldn\u2019t help but wonder\u201d:\u00a0 did you actually watch the show?\u00a0 After all, the series \u2014 and the first movie \u2014 made no secret\u00a0 of the fact that it doesn’t think very highly of Black people. Why would the franchise treat Brown people any differently?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll skip over the fact that Carrie and the girls live in the kind of colorless New York City that only the Klan could appreciate, and get right down to the more blatant manifestations of what the writers and producers must really <\/em>think about Black people.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Exhibit A: Season 3, Episode 5, \u201cNo Ifs, Ands, or Butts\u201d
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this episode \u2014 the \u201cBlack\u201d episode, if you will \u2014 you finally see a little color on the show.\u00a0 And these colored people happen to be particularly successful:\u00a0 Adina Williams is the chef and owner of a 5-star soul food restaurant that the girls have decided to patronize, and her brother, Shavon Williams, is an artist rep for Tommy Boy records. Shavon becomes enthralled with Samantha, and brings her into his realm: ghetto New York clubs, complete with metal detectors and Black women screaming \u201cback of the line, mutha-f**ka!\u201d\u00a0 Samantha seems right at home, and starts running around New York using \u201cBlack talk\u201d (or, \u201cAfrican American talk,\u201d as Charlotte asserts) such as: \u201cthat\u2019s whack!\u201d and \u201cI got to get me some of that!\u201d And, of course, Shavon has a big black penis that everyone has to know about.<\/p>\n

Shavon and Samantha have a great love affair, until the angry Black woman, his sister Adina, has to ruin it with her bigotry. Adina tells Samantha not to date her brother anymore because Samantha is White and could \u201cnever understand this. It\u2019s a Black thing, O.K?\u201d (The nerve <\/em>of this Black woman to be so intolerant of other cultures!) There is finger waving and neck rolling galore (because everyone knows that\u2019s how Black women act).\u00a0 But when Samantha refuses to back down, Adina (the successful chef and business owner, please keep up!) takes matters into her own hands \u2014 quite literally \u2014 and snatches handfuls of Samantha\u2019s hair, In the middle of the club<\/em>. (Not even V.I.P.?!)<\/p>\n

Shavon has to step in and break up the fight, and how does he do it?\u00a0 By yelling: \u201ccome on, guys! Keep it real! Keep it real!\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point, I\u2019m wondering, do these writers even know<\/em> any Black people?! I can\u2019t decide who is more disappointing: Michael Patrick King for writing this blatantly effortless attempt to portray a Black story, or the actors who were so far down to their last paycheck that they took on these roles.<\/p>\n

But, I digress.<\/p>\n

Exhibit B: Blair Underwood as Supersex man<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Season 5, Sex and the City introduces its only recurrent Black character:\u00a0 Blair Underwood as Dr. Robert Leeds.\u00a0 Sticking with the theme that Black people are only successful in the entertainment industry, Robert is a doctor for the Knicks. He also simply can\u2019t get enough of Miranda, and \u2014 surprise! \u2014 he has a big Black penis (because, what else are Black men good for?). It is consistently referred to throughout Underwood\u2019s tenure on the show.\u00a0 When the look how tolerant we are <\/em>interracial charade is over and Miranda dumps Robert for Steve, her baby’s daddy,\u00a0 Robert’s parting shot to Miranda is how no one could match the depth of his big Black penis.<\/p>\n

Even after the messy break up, when Steve confronts Robert \u2014 who is supposed to be in mourning over the loss of Miranda \u2014 Robert is seen in a terrycloth bathrobe with three half-naked women running through his apartment. I mean, everyone knows that the only thing that can quell a Black man’s insatiable sexual appetite is a menage \u00e0 four<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, they’ve covered the hypersexualized Black men stereotype and the ghetto-no-matter-how-successful angry Black woman; what other stereotypes could they drum up?<\/p>\n

Ah, of course.<\/p>\n

Exhibit C: Jennifer Hudson as Country Mammy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the number of Black women who love and patronize SATC, the franchise refused to return the favor in the first movie.\u00a0 As Carrie\u2019s personal assistant, Jennifer Hudson\u2019s sole responsibility was to take care of Carrie and bring her \u201cback to life.\u201d And just like a mammy-god-mother should, she twitches her rented Louis Vuitton and disappears back into the country when her work is done.<\/p>\n

Exhibit D: SATC 2, in which clowns with dreds and loud outfits are the only Blacks who speak<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the second installment, during the pointless karaoke scene in which the girls sing some random female empowerment song that nobody knows, the only Blacks with speaking roles in the entire film are two dreded buffoons wearing sunglasses and loud outfits who are shuckin\u2019 and jivin\u2019 on the stage over the women from America.<\/p>\n

Kind of makes me sorry I complained about mammy<\/em> in the first movie.<\/p>\n

And, What?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It might be terrible to say that I love a series that just might hate Black people.\u00a0 But, welcome to Black reality.\u00a0 In our world, the options are to: (1)\u00a0 ignore the fact that we are not adequately or realistically<\/em> portrayed in Hollywood by Whites or Blacks<\/em> (Thanks, Tyler Perry!);\u00a0 or (2) turn off the T.V. unless Shonda Rhimes wrote it, and don\u2019t watch movies unless Spike Lee made it. That\u2019s just 21st Century America.<\/p>\n

So, to answer the question posed by the title, <\/em>I don’t know if Sex and the City<\/em> hates us and our brown cousins.\u00a0 What is obvious, however, is that the franchise is consistently insensitive to minorities and makes dismal attempts to understand our cultures — because we let them.\u00a0 We still watched the show, copied the fashion, bought the DVDs, had SATC<\/em> marathons before each movie, and spent hundreds going <\/em>to the actual premieres, in spite of the fact that we have not been \u2014 and likely will never <\/em>be \u2014 realistically portrayed and explored in-depth by this franchise.<\/p>\n

To answer the other gripe I heard about the film \u2013 Do the SATC<\/em> producers \u201cthink we\u2019re stupid?\u201d \u2014 of course they do.<\/p>\n

And they just might have a point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We like the color black…you Black people, though? Questionable… I must say I am surprised at all of the people who have been \u201cshocked\u201d and \u201cdisappointed\u201d that the Sex and the City 2 movie did not live up to expectations.\u00a0 For everyone who asked why the movie was so insensitive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[223,622,762,814,840,848,875,983],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-at-the-movies-with-a-diva","tag-cultural-insensitivity","tag-michael-patrick-king","tag-racism","tag-sarah-jessica-parker","tag-sex-and-the-city-2","tag-shonda-rhimes","tag-spike-lee","tag-tyler-perry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7nB6F-9f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}