#raceblindness

[sprinklespiice]

i recently watched the backrooms and i really enjoyed it but it also rubbed me the wrong way because it really just ignores how clark's blackness would impact his behavior and story

(MAJOR SPOILERS WARNING)

clark is a black man (hold for applause). but not only that, this takes place in santa clara valley, california, during the 1980s-90s. this was a predominantly white area. there has historically been redlining and segregation in this area, particularly against it's very small black population.

i bring this up because clark's behavior throughout the movie does not reflect this at all. he is a businessman working in a predominantly white area, selling to white customers and employing them. yet, he is openly hostile and angry with the people around him. the culture and social rules would not allow him to find any measure of success with this behavior.

it feels like this role was written for a white man. or at least, a man in a monoracial community. the writing completely disregards any of the complex dynamics that a black person would have with working/living in a predominantly white community.

i know the movie wants me to see clark in the wrong, but i can't help but question it because im not blind to his race the way the writing is. i'm seeing that every single person he interacts with is white, that he has a failing business in a white community, that he wanted to pursue higher education but couldn't. his frustration, to me, comes from a very reasonable place. because I've felt that frustration. and i think many others in the black community have also felt that frustration.

the movie constantly tries to make the point that clark won't take responsibility for anything...which is really weird when you take into account that he is a black man in a society that Does bar him from achieving success! especially in an area that has a history of sidelining segregation laws and doing sketchy things for the sole purpose of putting people like him at a disadvantage. this doesn't mean he's completely exempt from the conseuqences of his actions or that he does no wrong, just that this feels like a bad point for a movie written by white people that mostly stars a white cast to make.

i think his relationship with his wife especially rubbed me the wrong way because i don't think it is a good idea to portray a black man abusing his white wife in this day and age. it's not that these kinds of relationships don't or have never existed, but that when you portray these things it doesn't exist in a vacuum. black men being accused of abusing and harassing white women is a very real rhetoric that has led to the murder and unjust arrest of many black men throughout history. i think it was irresponsible to portray an interracial relationship like this while not taking into account how that would impact their dynamic or how it might play into broader stereotypes and racist rhetoric.

i guess to sum up my point, raceblindness in writing is not a good thing. because, unfortunately, our societies and cultures are not raceblind. i liked the movie, and i was really happy to see a black horror protagonist get so much love, but after seeing it i'm wondering why it took said black protagonist being abusive and victimizing only white people for that to happen. it comes across as people liking a black character only when the effects of their blackness are entirely ignored.

[oak1985]

Raceblindness at its worst:

Sir Henry MacCullum “expounded the true Imperialism in a few pregnant sentences.  He said—‘The Indian community were British citizens, and when he had an address presented to him by the leading [white] authorities, it covered Indians as well as themselves.  They had, therefore, made a point of not accepting those [Indian] addresses, not from any spirit at all antagonistic to the Indian community, but simply because he wanted it to be recognised that they were part and parcel of the whole community…in connection with the whole subject of obliterating racial differences, we could not do better than being from the first point before the country was united in setting our backs against any little step…which might create a seperate [sic] and differential portion of the population’” (quoted in Colonial Indian News, 21 February 1902)