Month: November 2019

Mixed-ish is the second show to come as a spin-off of the Golden Globe Award-Winning show, Black-ish. The show follows Rainbow Johnson as she recounts her life growing in a mixed-race family in the ’80s. While highlighting the constant predicaments she and the family had to face over whether to assimilate to classic American values. After being removed from a hippie commune, Paula and Alicia were forced to move their families into the suburbs. As her parents struggle to conform back to American social expectations, Bow and her siblings struggle with navigating an integrated school in which they’re perceived as neither black nor white In The family’s experiences illuminate the challenges of finding one’s own identity when the rest of the world can’t decide where you belong. In Kenya Barris’s latest installment of the Johnson family, Barris says that it is her goal to follow Bow in her journey of self-discovery and to encourage others to do the same.  While in theory that sounds great- it was not executed to the point of perfection…..-ish. The first thought that probably appeared in your mind is why does this show have to be perfect. When [your choosing]to balance delicate topics like race, class, and identity; it is your job as a producer to ensure that it is an accurate portrayal of one’s life without being exclusive. As much as I would like to think that Kenya Barris was trying to make a show that really encapsulates being a mixed-race person in the black community however the show fails to even address its true premise properly.

For the next two weeks. We are going to have a Hulu and Undue, where I am going to  discuss some of the following topics:

• History of mixed in the United States of America
• History of Black Sitcoms
• Voice of Color
• Colorblindness
• Colorism

And how they pertain to Kenya Barris’ Black-ish, Grown-ish, and Mixed-ish series and why is it that Mixed-ish is not needed in this series. Currently, I have not reached the word limit for this blog post so I am choosing to fill this in a small bio on Kenya Barris so that you understand that my critique of his series are not biased.  Kenya Barris is an Emmy Nominated producer and screenwriter, who uses the show Black-ish to tell a story about his life and raising a black family now. Kenya Barris’s wife is also biracial, a doctor and her name are Rainbow, much like her screen counterpart. At the beginning of this journey, it was clear that Black-ish served as Barris’ passion project. For one episode, “Please, Baby, Please,” Barris up the production cost for the episode to acquire the score for a song that is deeply rooted in the black community, Sam Cooke’s “A Change Gonna Come” and even got Spike Lee to do a voice-over for the same episode.  Kenya Barris has produced cultural relative content that presents black people in ways that we haven’t seen before while also explaining why that is. However, in recent projects, the same vitality that had made him famous has been missing from his projects. Why that is and more will be covered in our next blog post. [Insert Narrator Voice] “Next time on The Confessions of a Black Internet Troll.

 

To entertain my blackness, I took part in observing my first ever Stoop. To be honest, the selling point for me to go was seeing Wale. But the thing that made me stay is the message behind the Stoop. “A place for students of color to express themselves through art” The first question I had about the event is why call this cultivation of art “The Stoop.” So I consulted the top academic journal, urban dictionary, and they defined a stoop as “a small staircase ending in a platform and leading to the entrance of an apartment building or other building” This made me very puzzled. Why would we name such an event off concrete stairs? However, as if God himself was eavesdropping into my thoughts, a flash of the beginning of every black movie (that is not about slavery) and I realized that they all begin at a stoop. The stoop represented a place to gather for the community. All the action in the urban community happens at the stoop.
This year the overarching theme was about mental health in minority communities. What I found interesting is that though there is a theme to keep in mind — Artist was given a free space to express themselves. People sang original pieces while others choreographed to their favorite songs. And our job as the audience was to provide them with this open space.

What can be improved? Given the name, imagine if gave a vibe that was more of an underground vibe. Having it at alumni vibe was fun, yet sometimes it was border lining talent show. Another thing is the celeb guest. What if we gave the celeb guess was brought more into the aspect of the Stoop. Which I know would be hard to do, given that even booking them would be hard but getting someone personable that would want to immerse themselves into the aspect of what the ‘stoop’ is. Whether that be that they either host or sit in on the event until its time for them to perform or say their piece — the sense of community. But I don’t even think that is truly there in the minority community at Penn State, which comes to my problem with the Stoop. It was put by the PRCC, yet the majority of the crowd was black. And to me, that is not the problem. But like Wale brought up in the showcase, what would it look like if everyone supported everyone. It doesn’t feel like that is here at Penn State. And navigating through Penn state is see the clear division.
We Are Divided. That something that we need to realize and address. That was the purpose of the Stoop. To gather minority groups, and it failed. Not to any fault of the organizers, but it is a flaw in our thinking. We, as minorities, are our own biggest internet trolls. I don’t know how many times I have written this line, but it is true. We have this complex that we must excel, and for some to excel at something, someone has to be beneath them. Unconsciously, we are allowing ourselves to fall into this caste system. Instead of realizing that we all have face discrimination. We all are not a part of the mythical norm. The only way for us to break this mythical norm is through If we shared them, that all that matters. We are all we’ve got—so let’s use it.