{"id":48226,"date":"2016-07-11T21:30:58","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T21:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48226"},"modified":"2017-07-16T00:29:23","modified_gmt":"2017-07-16T00:29:23","slug":"dangerous-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48226","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dangerous Ideas<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Gazette<\/a>
\n2016-06-20<\/p>\n

Melissa Jacobs<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nPhoto by Chris Crisman C\u201903<\/small><\/p>\n

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts<\/a> exposes how the myth of biologically distinct races\u2014forged in the era of slavery\u2014continues to poison the present, affecting attitudes and policies on everything from child welfare to medical treatment.<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much humor to be found around the subjects Dorothy Roberts<\/a> deals with<\/strong>, but the Saturday Night Live<\/em><\/a> parody, \u201cThe Day Beyonc\u00e9 Turned Black<\/a>,\u201d was both bitingly funny and practically tailor-made for analysis by the lawyer, scholar, and social-justice advocate who serves as the University\u2019s 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor.<\/p>\n

Roberts referenced the sketch at the beginning of a talk titled \u201cWhat\u2019s So Dangerous About Black Women\u2019s Sexuality?\u201d that she gave on February 17. That was shortly after Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s<\/a> release of her music video, \u201cFormation<\/a>,\u201d and live performance of the song at the Super Bowl <\/a>halftime show\u2014\u201cbacked up by an entourage of black women sporting Black Panther Party<\/a> Afros and berets,\u201d Roberts said, and lyrically \u201csaluting the Black Lives Matter<\/a> movement, protesting against police brutality, and celebrating black culture and black beauty, including her \u2018Negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils\u2019 and her daughter Blue Ivy\u2019s baby hair and Afro.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the most part, \u201cblack people were really proud and happy that Beyonc\u00e9 was as militant as she was,\u201d Roberts added. \u201cWhite America, on the other hand, reacted\u2014at least much of it reacted\u2014quite differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which the folks at SNL<\/em><\/a> took and ran with.<\/p>\n

Formatted like a movie trailer, \u201cThe Day Beyonc\u00e9 Turned Black\u201d skewered whites\u2019 assumptions around cultural ownership (\u201cMaybe this song isn\u2019t for us.\u201d \u201cBut usually everything<\/em> is!\u201d), arrogance in assigning racial categories (a familiar co-worker isn\u2019t black<\/em> black; but a youth outfitted in a gold Africa pendant and camouflage jacket obviously is), and fears of racial contamination (in a white mother\u2019s mounting horror as she imagines her tween daughter has \u201cturned black,\u201d too, from listening to Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s music.)<\/p>\n

But Roberts homed in on another revealing exchange: \u201cTo me the most telling, truthful moment in this skit is two white guys cowering under a desk, when they realize that not only Beyonc\u00e9 but other female celebrities who become popular with white people\u2014like Kerry Washington<\/a>, the star of ABC\u2019s very popular Scandal<\/em><\/a>\u2014are also black. And one man says, \u2018How can they be black? They\u2019re women.\u2019 And the other shrieks, \u2018I think they might be both<\/em>!\u2019…<\/p>\n

…\u201cMy parents had a strong sense that all human beings are equal and can live harmoniously and peacefully together,\u201d Roberts says. \u201cThey were not so much civil rights advocates as human rights advocates. My very early childhood was deliberately focused on human equality.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a kindergartner, Roberts recalls, she embraced her parents\u2019 philosophy. \u201cI remember being proud that I had parents of different races and that was an important part of my identity. But by the time I was in seventh grade, I identified as black and was much more interested in liberation for black people than in interracial relationships,\u201d she says. \u201cUntil extremely recently, I really diminished the fact that my parents were black and white. Most people think of me as black. I don\u2019t identify as biracial or mixed race.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article in PDF<\/a> or HTML<\/a> format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts exposes how the myth of biologically distinct races\u2014forged in the era of slavery\u2014continues to poison the present, affecting attitudes and policies on everything from child welfare to medical treatment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,8,23674,394,20,25],"tags":[10148,1272,24464,9925],"class_list":["post-48226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-social-justice","category-socialscience","category-usa","category-women","tag-dorothy-e-roberts","tag-dorothy-roberts","tag-melissa-jacobs","tag-the-pennsylvania-gazette"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48226"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54519,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48226\/revisions\/54519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}