Let's Give "Black Hollywood" a Try. (Video)

Let's Give "Black Hollywood" a Try.

I'm paraphrasing, so, take my exact words lightly: "He played the race card. Yeah? As if the race card isn't automatically being played in every situation?" My professor said something along those lines when our class discussed the annoyance of racial boundaries and how white people claim that black people use the "race card" all too often.

I bring this up based on the movie that we watched in class on Thursday, April 3rd. Classified X was the name and bringing out the ineffectiveness of "white Hollywood" was the game. Not to bash the entire movie because for the brutal amount of bitterness coming from Melvin Van Peebles, he did get his point across and he was very productive at doing it. As my new moto is, "is it not what you say, but how you say it."

Van Peebles takes a stab at "white Hollywood" and basically says that the white man has the power and whatever he says, goes. Therefore, whatever the white man decides to be aired on television is what everyone, including the black man, sees. I am almost sure that that was the main problem on his mind. It was not the fact that blacks were slaves or any race card like that, it was a rational argument. Since the beginning of Hollywood, film-making and so forth, the white man has been the "go-to" for what is accepted and what is not in media. This brings forth the question that Van Peebles touches on: What if the black man was in charge for a time? What would change and if he was in charge? Would America change its prejudices towards him and believe, even if for a brief moment, that there are more than just the "white sides to life."

Don't take everything you hear and see for face value and before you make an assumption of what the message is, think first of who is sending the message. They might have less credentials on the topic than you think.