racism and the Oscars

["amber stevensons" <biggertomasz@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would first like to mention that the discussion of Denzel Washington's
role as a corrupt police officer is different than white actors playing
similar roles. The difference is HE IS BLACK and his playing a corrupt
police officer is signifigant because of recent public cases of police
brutality, and stereotypes of African-Americans ( untrustworthy, greedy,
crafty )being exibited in that role. So comparing an African-American
playing a corrupt police officer with a white actor in the same role is
problematic.

Also, dismissing the conversation of the Oscars has some validity, however,
claiming to " Jump...to the proletarian revolution " is also a mistake. By
dismissing racism in American society and claiming that the proletarian
revolution is somehow separate is forgetting that a great deal of
"proletarians" have to deal with racism and may instead choose a nationalist
route instead of a class form of resistance because of opinions such as
that. Marxists have a responsibility to seek to understand the problems of
racism as they come up in popular culture not hide from them.

Just a reminder racism ( or the end of it for that matter ) is not dependent
on a few PEOPLE being in positions of power or influence. Racism is
institutional. That being said, actresses and actors do not represent and
end to racism when 70% of prison inmates for example are minorities.

Lastly, the objectification of women is a by-product of institutionalized
sexism. So it strikes me as odd when marxists ( i have just joined the list
so i dont know if all of you are ) would make a comment such as this:

Joe Freeman wrote:

I have not seen "Monster Ball" but understand that Ms. Berry took off her
clothes, which is enough for me to see it when it appears in theaters in my
area and give a thumps up for the Oscar.

Women have enough trouble accomplishing their goals without being accused of
"sleeping with someone" to be in their position. By degrading the quality of
her performance to her taking off her clothes ( especially someone who is on
a revolutionary web-site ) it re-enforces those ideas of a woman's worth
solely lying in her physical attractiveness to heterosexual men.

Comradely,

biggertomasz


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.