I'm about to get raw!

Dear Diary,

I am now officially a mad black woman! I've been so invested in rejecting this title b/c it had been assigned to me I never thought it might be applicable. Now it is and I'm claiming it, not reclaiming it but using it of my own volition to serve my own agenda. I'm about to be on a Michele Wallace type "rant" so read on with caution! I can not for the life of me understand why black male comedians dress up like black women for a laugh. That's not funny! It's ludicrous (which I can't even spell now b/c of luda)! We won't support Don Cheadle in a movie about the continuing pain of our people in the supposed "motherland," but we will go out in droves to make diary of a mad black woman the number one movie in America?! Do you understand how f*cked up that is? tyler perry has caricatures of us on screen and we are supporting it; you can't convince me that white people were going to see madea on opening weekend.

As a film version of the oh so popular black church plays, it tries to offer up a message of morality and Christian values as well as entertain. Preachers took entire congregations to see this movie! In my cynical conspiracy theory believing head this is just another example of how the black church is being co-opted by the right. The prosperity gospel and increasing attacks on homosexuality are new to the sermons of late but they do nothing to speak to the real issues of the congregation. As Dr. Stanley put it, the church has become a corporation as opposed to a hospital for those in need. But the hospital has been a corporation in this country for a minute, so I guess that move in the religious sector was inevitable as well.
I'm not mad at my girl Elise, she can act and apparently these black church movies are the only movies with majority black casts getting made right now, despite halle and denzel breaking through the glass ceiling three long years ago. But seriously, can black people get some decent roles in Hollywood? Can we grow up thinking that being a filmmaker is an option? Can we be techies? Can we get someone i.e. spike or who ever to financially support black people tryin' to go into film/tech school? Can we want to write screenplays?I didn't see the oscars, but I heard enough of the fall out to know that chris's comedy may have been misinterpreted by whites and blacks alike. What was supposed to be a satirical poke at the oscars detachment from regular folk, came off to many, including myself, as a jab at black people's inevitable unculturedness. He didn't comment on the fact that the films nominated are usually not wide released, that they don't normal have black people in them either. I know as a black person I'm supposed to be crunk about jamie winning for ray, but I'm not. You can't tell me that jamie was better than don chedle, you can't tell me if jamie wasn't the token black friend that Hollywood wants to have he still would have one. I couldn't believe that he took tom cruise to Harlem to kind of show him around the neighborhood. What is that?! Like the ghetto's a safari or something.

Further still this war on images of black people is unending and we aren't even critiquing it anymore. We have reached bamboozled proportions and people are laughing!! As jalylah says, if you set it up as a supposed satire, then people feel free not to question it which is absolutely ridiculous! The more I think about race-o-rama, recent SNL skits, etc. The angrier I get. Just b/c you have black people involved doesn't mean it isn't racist.

Ali called to tell me 20/20 was doing a segment on colorism. We tuned in and were outraged. John Stossle began by saying, "Did you know that some blacks discriminate against other blacks?" what?! This comment assumes both an all white audience and that white people didn't event colorism in the first place. If there wasn't differential treatment based on skin color, there wouldn't be colorism. He talked to students and black actors who spoke about how that plays out in Hollywood, light skinned blacks get professional type roles while dark skinned actors play crackheads and gang members. But this is of course another indication of how white people can be implicated in colorism too, b/c clearly black people certainly aren't casting agents if we make it into the industry at all. Where is the NAACP on this? Doesn't anyone else see the ways in which our image is being constructed in the national media? And these aren't videos, this is supposed to be journalism!!

I saw a commercial for Zulu ringtones that had an old school caricature of an African with a bone in his hair and big lips and eyes. Where is the aclu on this? Am I the only one seeing this?

I can't comment on halle in "Their eyes were watching God" just yet b/c I had to tape it. But I'm going to hazard that my blogging sister fecundmellow is on the right track.

I feel like I'm really about to be on some turn the TV off b/c really this is just too much for me. I feel like I'm screaming and no ones listening. Maybe I will write some letters, and sign them "from an actual mad black woman." Maybe . . .