What kind of image are we selling

In the book “The Readers Quilt”, chapter 12 refers to the movie “Clara’s Heart”. In this movie Whoopi Goldberg plays as a Jamaican woman who serves a white woman. Clara creates an attachment with the family making a strong bond with the white woman’s son. She teaches the boy songs and tells him stories that they use to tell in the island. Later in the movie, Clara has stacks of returned mail. That scene gives the audience the assumption image that she is illiterate.

There have been many times where I have been asked to play the ghetto role or the illiterate African American in a script. My mom always told me never to settle for those roles and I did. I settled for such a role when I played Tituba in a school play called the "Crucible". I belittled the whole thought of how black people are being used in the movie business. It wasn't until Hallie berry was awarded a Grammy for the movie monster ball, where she played a single African American mom, desperately looking for attention. In the movie she was on drugs, stayed in the projects and didn't want to get her life together because she was still waiting on her husband or boyfriend to get out of jail. In this film you can tell that the movie producer is being very stereotypical. The movie production only puts the negative things that black people do in movies. What they are not seeing is the successful black people that own their own businesses, who work in a corporate office, who are doctors, lawyers, engineers. Why can’t African Americans play one of those roles?

Why do African Americans continue to play a negative role in movies when they are aware of the negativity it portrays on our black race? Is it for the money? It seems like nobody cares what role they take, just as long as they have the spot light or just be seen in a movie. I don’t think that African American actors understand that they are selling an image of negativity. It’s like the black mentality is all about getting money and being rich. When you join the movie business it’s all about what the producers wants.

I am glad some of the women today have realized what the movie production is doing. Some African American women have came to a point that they will no longer play a role that degrades black women or the black race in general. The world makes it hard enough on women as it is, but who will be the real women? Who will take a stand against the negative image the movie production has put on our race? Who is the real woman?

- J’Nae Smith