Elizabeth City, NC
May 6, 2006
Senior Edition
or
The Compass 9
White
FX Reality Show Attempts to Answer Question
By Tashonda Harney
Editor-at-Large
f urely you have heard
phrases like these: “You couldn’t
walk a mile in my shoes,” or “I
wish you could feel what it is like
to be me.” The question is do you
want to know (better yet would
you want to know) what its like to
walk not just in another man’s
shoes, but in another man’s skin?
That’s the question FX’s (Fox
Extended Network) series asks as
it transforms, through extensive
makeup work, an African-
American family into a white
family and vice versa.
The two families live
together for the duration of the six
week experiment discussing their
experiences sometimes heated—
after the make-up comes off.
Filmmaker R.J. Cutler and actor/
hip-hop eminence Ice Cube teamed
up to produce “Black. White,” a
six-episode series in which an
African-American family becomes
white and a Caucasian family
become black. They then go out
into the world and see what life is
like in the others skin. The show
observes the dads as they find
work and buy shoes.
It also follows the kids as
they go to parties and school; and
it hones in on
the dinner
time
conversations
of the two
families,
who share
the same
house in a
Los Angeles
suburb
during the
experiment.
The
show whose
premise is
reminiscent
of John
Howard
Griffin’s
1959 book
“Black Like
examines the
often
contentious
and emotionally charged issues
that come up as the families try to
see life through new eyes. They
discover that while racism may be
more subtle, it is still very much
what many have dubbed “the third
rail of American public life” - the
issue nobody wants to touch. In
one episode the Black father
dressed as a white man goes to buy
shoes, plays golf, and gets a job at
a sports bar. As an avid viewer of
the show it can make you become
pretty angry at people’s comments
and feelings about another race,
even here in the 21st century. The
black dad in white face buys shoes
and has them slipped on his feet
“for the first time in my life,” and
later has a conversation with the
white dad in black face about
whether he imagines or actually
experiences racism. The moments
that seem to have stuck in
everyone’s mind revolve around
differences in perception about
racism. Throughout the show,
Bruno Marcotulli, the white man
in black face, seems committed to
the notion that racism is something
you create. At one point, he even
tells Brian Sparks, the African-
American in the show: “You’re
looking for it.”
One of the most
interesting twists in the show is
that it shows how much both sides
realize how much they don’t know
about the other. In an interview,
the show’s African-American dad
says, “I knew racism was there,
but I was shocked.” He has just
finished a stint bartending as a
white person in an all-white
neighborhood. Patrons, who
assume he was nothing more than
the average white man, discuss at
length the virtues of keeping their
white neighborhood “pure.” There
is also evidence that the whites of
the show think
of black culture
as an act or a
perception that
blacks put on
performances
instead of
learning about
the culture the
whites only
assume. In one
humorous but
racist moment,
the white
family dressed
as blacks are to
attend a black
church,
assuming that
all blacks were
into afro centric
attire, instead
of having on a
suit the white
father comes
dressed like an extra from the
movie “Coming to America”, with
full African clothing on dashiki
and all. Brian Sparks, the black
father on the show had this to say,
“Nobody wants to talk about race
because it makes them
uncomfortable.” Sparks concludes
that the difference for blacks and
whites is that blacks think about it
all the time because they are
constantly making adjustments to a
culture that is dominated by the
white experience, meaning blacks .
constantly feel they have to change
who they are to fit a white
dominated society.
Black. White is one of the
most watched and top rated shows
on FX. Black, White offers many
eye-opening lessons about cultural
differences and the way America
feels about people of other races,
and religions. I hope that as the
fiature leaders of America we
continue to press forward together,
all races, creeds, genders,
religions, shapes, and sizes. Let’s
not carry our country through what
our ancestors had to go through.
The Sparks Family, in both pictures
is the African-American
Family involved in the FX reality
show experiment, “Black, White.”