Thanks, Swagger Wagon, for taking music that is usually scary and making it adorable!
Spitting about nuclear families and carpooling? Awesome! Ciphers about tea parties? I love it!
Me loving a parody of what started as a legitimate artistic protest against powers that be actually keeping people down, but now does damage to many of those same people? Oreo-tastic!
Hey non colors. Ever wonder how you can give The Oreo Experience to more people? You may already be without even knowing it!
But here’s a handy reference list to help you help your of color friends help themselves though alienation. Simply use the guide below and we Oreos will see our numbers grow!
1. Ask us about our hair. Apart from skin tone, nothing sets blacks and white apart like hair. While non colors can get up, run a comb through their locks and be on their merry way, prepping black hair for the day is a 20-60 minute process. During this time, with our arms in the air, salve under our fingernails and more and more curling iron burns on our necks, we have time to think about just what bum luck we got cursed with. It would be wonderful to take a shower, jump in the pool or stand in the rain without worrying that our $100+ hair treatment is about to get ruined.
So to keep our self loathing in check, ask us about our hair. Ask to touch it. Ask if something is…”different” about it (this is especially useful after an Oreo has a relaxer) or how often we wash it.
Variations on that theme include saying things about how you “would love black hair” because it’s so “different,” “cool” or because “it doesn’t move once you get it how you want it.”
If an of color has braids or locks, get right up close. Much closer than you do when Jennifer at the office dyes her hair a lighter blonde. Reach for the roots and ponder aloud how exactly that works.
That sad, awkward feeling that will well up in your of color colleague will probably be just what that person needs to ditch the natural styles and go straight for the relaxer.
For more research: Check out the joys of chemical hair processing and learn what black things Oreos can’t help but do.
2. Discuss how the word nigger is offensive, but the word nigga isn’t. This is a conversation you will only have around the least threatening of of colors. So it’s a sign to that person that they’re nearly an Oreo anyway, so they may as well commit.
The discussion around the n-word is old and boring now, but that doesn’t mean that with the right planning, you can’t make it work. Maybe describe how that time you lived in that very ethnic neighborhood–you know, when you first moved to LA or NYC and were just staring out. And the people in the fast food joint/gang/church found you so cool, that you got to say the a version of the n word and no one was upset.
You can always also throw it into your facebook wall post to an of color like this friend did: “nigga boo, I need ur Euro number again.” Double Oreo points go to this of color recipient for a) living abroad and b) writing back.
For the record, any variation of the n word is perfectly fucking horrible**. But throw it into a quasi intellectual conversation and watch the Oreo population rise.
You can also make someone crawl inside their Oreo skin with variations like “what’s my ninjas!”
3. Tell us about that time you went to a black church and how fantastic it was. I was raised in a black Southern Baptist gospel church and I absolutely credit it for my turning into an Oreo. In that environment, I was treated to 4-hour long services with preachers singing call and response sermons. Church members got happy and fell out. And on a good day, we got a prophecy or two. And then after church, we were all treated to massive Sunday dinners of fried foods, sweet potatoes and hollerin’.
It was a culmination of every scene from every movie about black churches ever. And surprise, surprise, I didn’t fit in.
What’s Oreo-spiring to hear, however, are stories where non colors talk about the one time they went to a black church, usually for a school project or because mapquest did something horribly incorrect. Sure, one day of all of the above is just fine. But every Sunday for 52 weeks a year for 17 years, makes me long for my quiet Episcopalian chapels.
***There are times when the n word isn’t so fucking horrible. Like in the right jokes (more on those later). But not the wrong ones. (yes, if you click that link, you’ll find some off color of color jokes! C’mon. You know you want to).
How dare she. How. Very. Dare she!
Here’s what I learned today that is sending me straight to the skin bleaching and hair dye.
If you are a person of color + you win a beauty pageant = The terrorists win.
More than one post went up today saying that Rima Fakih’s Miss USA win is
a) an example of abusive reverse racism
b) funding terrorism.
Says Debbie Schlussel:
It’s a sad day in America but a very predictable one, given the politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate in which we’re mired. The Hezbollah-supporting Shi’ite Muslim, Miss Michigan Rima Fakih–whose bid for the pageant was financed by an Islamic terrorist and immigration fraud perpetrator–won the Miss USA contest. I was on top of this story before anyone, telling you about who Fakih is and her extremist and deadly ties.
I normally applaud beauty pageants for their insistence upon an impossible beauty standard. I mean, how am I supposed to hate myself as a non size-0 woman if said women aren’t paraded around in front of me on the regular?
But now I love them even more! Now, more young girls who are off-model from the models in these shows will keep themselves off the runways lest they are accused of being anti-American. And the beauty standard will go unchanged! I have spent too much time getting this hair to lay flat for that to suddenly be okay!
Just like Ramin Setoodeh drove scores of gay actors back into their closets, writers like Schlussel are ensuring that of color beauties think twice before thinking they’re beautiful enough for America’s runways.
You learn a lot on a college campus. A lot.
A story coming out of Harvard Law School fondly reminded me of one of an experience I had when visiting colleges during my senior year of high school.
The Harvard story goes like this: A promising young law student says to her friends via email:
Way to go law student for applying the logic you have bee learning in school to a major social issue! With so few of color students (let’s hear it for my Ivy League Oreos!) pahking their cahs in Hahvahd’s garahge, it only stands to reason that it’s because your RBP is well, just not as bright.
And that reminded me of an inspiring day on the campus of a school I was considering attending.
The year I graduated from college, my home state repealed any sort of affirmative action practices in schools. What this one college took that to mean is that they shouldn’t allow any minority students to attend their weekly summer sleepover recruiting events. So they pulled the minority students out of the early scheduled sessions and put us all into to one camp session.
Not cool. Because there we were. About 200 Oreos and Coconuts at the tops of our class with our Bad Religion tapes and our composition notebooks full of angsty poetry, forced to hang out with a bunch of other of colors.
And then this doozie at lunch:
College (aged) counselor: You guys are so lucky to be minorities.
Minorities: Oh?
C(A)C: Yeah! You guys can get into school and not have to be smart or anything!
I don’t know what became of that girl, but she left an impression that day. I resolved to stand up for who I was.
A proud Oreo.
The conversation shifted to field hockey and John Hughes and I’m pretty sure that by the end of that chat, she was wondering if we were really minorities or not.
For proof of how much fun it is to be a minority on a college campus, check out this party, this club and go back to school with a little pop quiz.
Architect says he didn’t know what porch monkey meant.
a) Do you believe him?
b) The fact that a super offensive term is now just used–is that a sign of progress or regression?
To be fair, it is difficult to be up on all the mean memes out there. I, in fact, sang a version of Jingle Bells to my mom once that went like this:
“Jingle Bells, Batman smells, granny got a gun
Pull the trigger shot a _____”
I was 8 or so and had no idea what I was saying…or why Mom started crying.
When did you first learn that something you said was off color…pun definitely intended? Let us know!
Freeman says he doesn’t want to have a Black History Month, talk about racism or be called a black man. But he does have a near sassy head shake in there. Do we have a new Oreo king?
We’ve talked about it briefly before, but is there a term for a gay person who hopes to be seen as straight?
Hmm, charming, attractive and talented? Yeah, I definitely don't want this guy pretending to be after me!
The inspiration for discovering this term comes to us courtesy of Newsweek’s Ramin Setoodeh, an openly gay man in the media who writes that gay actors shouldn’t play straight people. He criticizes Sean Hayes and his current performance on Broadway in Promises, Promises and Jonathan Groff who plays a straight guy on Glee.
He says that neither of these guys’ performances are believable because they are, irl, gay dudes.
Thank you for the head’s up, Ramin. And thanks for sending more would-be’s to the self loathing fold!
Nothing’s going to freak out some up and coming young actors more than hearing that because of who they are, they should be prohibited from accepting the vast majority of roles in film and television. I can almost hear the collective cry from kids who haven’t come out yet (and thanks to you, sir, might never get around to breathing that sigh of relief) in theater arts departments all over the country.
Picture it with me! Scores of young men are now criticizing every syllable they utter–was that a near lisp, they’ll think, or did I just stutter? They will watch their feet as they walk to make sure there’s no hint of a super gay sashay…but what if they’re just side stepping to avoid their own tears? Oh well, better man up! Otherwise, there will be a critic like Ramin to remind them that as gay folk, they’re just not good enough.
It’s a good thing that Ramin hasn’t noticed how highly trained and experienced actors go through years and years of practice and preparation to erase biases they may bring to a character. Or that he overlooked the fact that straight actors play gay, that back in the day men played women. And no one tell him that Idina Menzel is not really a green witch, that David Hasslehoff is not really a mad scientist capable of creating a serum that can split a person’s personality into two distinct halves, that Josh Brolin is not George W. Bush and that Cate Blanchette is not John Lennon.
And why leave out the lesbians? Ramin cites a couple of guys in his piece, but doesn’t seem to think that
Sometimes masks fit so well, why bother taking them off, huh Ramin?
Lesbians playing not-lesbians is a apparently not a problem. Poor ladies, why let them get away with being okay with themselves. C’mon, Ramin, without adding the gals to the you-should-self-hate list, it’s like some sort of weird affirmative action program. And we all know how horrible those are.
So what is the Oreo version of the straight gay? If an Oreo is someone who is black on the outside, but white on the inside, what’s the word for someone who’s actually gay, but presents as a socially acceptable breeder? Spaghetti squash? Testicle? (c’mon, the latter–they’re basically smoothish on the outside and inside filled with, well, lots of not straight biological tubing)
And what do you think? Should actors have to put height, weight, training and sexual preference on their head shots?
Photos courtesy of PhotoshopDisasters
Russia likes variety in their pop stars of color. Which do you prefer?
This is what I (wish I) look like under my clothes.
So I’ve been catching up on my DVRed shows since I’ve been back and my interested was definitely piqued by this presentation from Nightline.
“Why Can’t a Successful Black Woman Find a Man?”
The conclusion they came to was that RBP males are just kind of okay people and that of color women should lower their expectations and snag themselves a middle of the road mate. The men on the show described black women as “delusional” for wanting men who were, as panelist Sherri Shepard suggested, “ambitious” and who had “a sense of humor.” Men also described women as conniving and petty and said that women should use sex appeal and not reason, logic or passion if they want their men to listen to them.
I, of course, was horrified at this.
They were ignoring the much simpler answer: These ladies should go full Oreo and date white!
They’re obviously headed in the Oreo direction anyway what with their college degrees, bulging bank accounts and not-AIDS. So why not dive the way in??
So many benefits to dating white.
Now, back to the panel itself. Way to go Nightline for choosing the right commentators and solidifying some really important societal tropes. I mean, who better to host a discussion about something as personal as marriage and who ends up with whom and why than comedian Steve Harvey!
Also Nightline, way to remind us that there is in fact a terrifying social problem if women do not get married. This conversation wasn’t centered around people choosing to forgo relationships, it was about women not being able to marry. How dare they.
Like other discussions in the genre, the Nightline special began with the Disney-inspired assumption that marriage is an appropriate and universal goal for women. Any failure to achieve marriage must therefore be pathological. With this starting assumption panelists were encouraged to offer solutions without needing to fully articulate why low marriage rates are troubling.
Writer Melissa Harris-Lacewell outlined the event and shows us how RBP women are really making things difficult for the county and themselves:
In the 1960s, the Moynihan Report blamed black women heads of household for social deterioration in black communities. In the 1980s single black mothers were vilified as welfare cheats responsible for the nation’s economic decline. In the 1990s black women were blamed for birthing a generation of “crack babies” that were predicted to burden the nation’s health and educational systems. The Nightline conversation was suspiciously reminiscent of this prior reasoning. As the nation copes with its anxieties about a black president, a shifting economy and a new global position, black women suddenly reemerge as a problem to be solved.
All this could be solved, ladies if you’d just embrace the Oreo lifestyle. Which yes, includes things like enjoying schooling and employment, but also things like dating the right guys. And by right, we mean, white. Because they’re out there. They can get you into the right clubs. And according to these panelists, RBP men do not want to step up to the plate.
The solution offered most frequently in Wednesday’s conversation was familiar: professional black women need to scale back expectations.
But questionable casting or not, thanks, Nightline for adding to my self loathing. Not only am I an of color woman–the most undesirable of the women according to statistics and you; but I am also but I am an unmarried of color woman-proving your point that we’re hard to place to be correct. Yikes. I’m sorry, me. So very sorry.
We’ve talked here before about how important it is to wash, rinse and repeat the ethnicity out of one’s hair with a relaxer. But
Relaxed hair is not just easier to go into the pool with; it's your safety net!
now, thanks to a friend in Philly, we can see why in shocking detail.
The short story is, this cop was ticked off about his new beat. So, instead of filing a complaint or updating his resume on Monster, he did was made the most logical sense…he shot himself in the shoulder, then told his buddies that a black guy did it.
A cop had been shot; a manhunt was on. The block was cordoned off with yellow tape. Cops and SWAT teams fanned the streets. K-9 units scoured through brush. Some businesses were forced to close for five hours.
“The cops were questioning everybody,” Potts, 57, recalled.
Sgt. Robert Ralston, a 21-year veteran and father of five, said he’d been shot on patrol by a black man with “cornrows” and a “mark or tattoo under his left eye.”
Yesterday, the Overbrook neighbors were outraged to learn that it was all a lie.
This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Don’t like what you just did? Tell friends and neighbors that some black dude was responsible and soon the police tape goes up, few questions asked and you can get off pretty much scott free. Soon, your conscience will catch up to you and/or the lack of evidence will become clear, but not before you’ve enjoyed a few more minutes of freedom.
What makes this case a perfect reminder for proper hair care is that the cop told his friends that a guy with cornrows was his attacker. Cornrows are an obvious ethnic style worn by both men and women. And so, innocents with tightly braided hair were being stopped and questioned. But, any Oreos on the scene would have been left alone. With long, flowing locks of hair flapping in the breeze, from a distance, with a turtleneck and long sleeves on, Oreos might actually just look like curvy brunettes.
So keep that salve simmering on your scalp, kiddies. It will make the ride home much, much easier.
Oh, and for creating the stir that lost businesses money, kept people from their homes and scared the shit out of some innocents, you’ll be happy to know that Sgt. Ralston will not be criminally charged.
For more examples of how you can blame RBP for things you did…check out this list, courtesy of NewsOne.
The Oreo Experience 