Trey Johnson

Critical Context Paper

The piece of media that I am covering and writing about is a video called Shit White
Girls Sayto Black Girls. It stars Franchesca Ramsey (who is black) and is portraying a white
woman in the video. Throughout the video, it is a compilation of different questions and
statements that she is saying white women tend to say to black women. These statements and
questions are all a bit racist, however, she is saying that the white woman is talking to a black
woman when saying these things showing there is a friendship between the two. This means that
she is trying to show that they arent trying to be racist they are just ignorant on the fact that what
they are saying is racist. TO dive into this, we have to take a step back first and look at the
components.
In the video, she is playing a white woman and shes showing this in a few different ways
without even saying shes white. First off shes talking in a white accent. This may be hard to
explain but for the most part the majority of us know when someone is talking in a fake white
accent. Especially when it comes to the black culture, we are able to identify when someone is
using this accent when trying to make a joke or something. Its the same when someone wants to
have a black accent, theyll just use words or phrases thatll sound either grammatically incorrect
or ghetto. Words like dog when referring to someone else or saying a lot of yos or G are
things that a person will use when doing a black accent. Now that this has been established, you
can look at her physically: the blonde wig. Shes portraying a white woman, but not just any
white woman, its a blonde one which in our culture is signified as dumb (no disrespect to blonde
women reading). Everybody knows about the joke of the dumb blonde, so this helps strengthen
what she is trying to accomplish with this video.

She has now established that her character doesnt really know a lot because she is a
blonde. This helps because the problem she is addressing is that white people sometime dont
even realize that they are being disrespectful because of them being ignorant. A huge majority of
the time, misunderstandings occur because of the fact that there is quite a bit of ignorance
involved; the lack of knowledge about a situation leads to these. The thing is, how is anyone
supposed to know they are doing something wrong if they are not informed and theyre given the
opportunity to fix or change it? The answer is it cant be done, however, you have to come at the
problem with the right approach. Her argument would not be as effective if she just made a video
yelling at all the white women who say these things. Instead, which I believe was a great idea,
she decided to make a comedy video that she knew would be criticized and evaluated. Criticism
and evaluation lead to people actually thinking about this concept where maybe they wouldnt
have given it the time of day if she decided to just yell. With evaluation and criticism comes
discussions, and from there sometimes change. With a video like this, its fairly easy to find a
person who did not agree with what they saw.
Tami Winfrey Harris wrote an article for Clutchmagonline and she discussed the way she
was able to relate to this issue. She is a black female and for years, especially through college,
was one of the only black women around. In her article she wrote about her experiences going
through the comment sections of the Huffington Post, Jezebel, and Facebook and she wrote
about what she saw, which included 1) This is reverse-racism/stereotyping! 2) Everybody says
dumb racial stuff equally. Guess what this black girl said to me once? 3) Nobody really says this
stuff. I mean, maybe in the South/Flyover States4) How come this is okay, but Shit black
girls say to white girls wouldnt be? Her own experience with looking at peoples reactions to
this video justify the problem in and of itself. The fact that there were many people who felt like

this showed there is a problem with ignorance. Also, this is showing that she has effectively
come up with something that has people on both sides talking which, like I said before, is vital to
process of change.
Now take the movie Rush Hour 2. Rush Hour 2 is the second movie in a trilogy of Rush
hour movies that star Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. Its a buddy cop movie where the two main
cops are completely different from each other (like any other movie) but these two arent your
average different: Chris Tucker is black and Jackie Chan is Chinese. Throughout the trilogy
they go to places like meeting in L.A., traveling to Hong Kong in the second, and going to
France in the third. When they first meet the dont get along, in fact, they actually hate each
other. As the movie and trilogy goes on, they end up becoming best friends and then to the point
of brother from another mother. Its a cool experience seeing their friendship grow. Now back
to the second one, focus groups of Asians, Blacks, and Whites all engaged with the movie and
reflected their views of the racial jokes throughout the film. In the publication I read titled
Naturalizing Racial Differences Through Comedy: Asian, Black, and White Views on Racial
Stereotypes in Rush Hour 2, this was the analysis of a some of the answers they gave about
what they saw: Despite participants emphasis on the ctional nature of Rush Hour 2, they
perceived a sense of realism in its racial representations; few participants stated that racial
stereotypes in the lm were unreal or incorrect. Although many participants claimed that they
could distinguish between ction and reality, we observed strong continuity between the lms
representations of race and participants general opinions about racial traits. As participants
comments suggest, many revealed (likely without realizing it) that they thought many of the
stereotypes expressed in the lm were based on truth.

In Victoria ODonnells book Television Criticism, she has a section called reality that
perfectly fits with this. She says that Reality is encoded by certain social codes that relate to
appearance, behavior, speech, sound, and setting. Appearance includes skin color, clothing, hair,
makeup, speech, facial expressions, and gestures So what she is saying here is that information
about a character is given off just by way the character dresses or talks because they already have
a reality that we characterize them of having. Chris Tucker is considered in the movie as an
average black guy. Hes loud and boisterous, he gawks over girls throughout the trilogy, hes
silly, and hes always dancing or singing. It isnt written that hes playing the part of the average
black guy, hes written as the part of detective James Carter, LAPD cop. However, because of
the reality that we have given to these characteristics, that is what we look at him as instead of
being an individual.
Now the reason I brought up that movie and the publication about it was because the
majority of the people didnt have a problem with the negative stereotypes in the movie. My
thoughts are that its because of the Celebrity or the Hollywood of the movie. Oh thats just
Chris Tucker acting funny, Oh thats a movie, its all a joke, or sometimes even well yeah
its funny because its kind of true are all things that come out of peoples mouths when
referring to the racist jokes in the movie. Now remember its funny because its kind of true,
Ill come right back to that. Right now its important to realize that because it is a popular movie
and is classified as a comedy that it wont be taken too seriously. If it was a drama, thriller,
horror, documentary, etc., it might be different. Back to the its funny because its kind of true
thing. Why did some people not find the Shit White Girls Sayto Black Girls video? The
answer is because they didnt think it was the truth, so no it wasnt funny. However, every black

person, male and female, have all laughed because they have been in these experiences making
them true indeed.
In Rush Hour 2, Chinese people werent being called out. There were a million jokes
about Chinese peoples heights and the way they talk but the point of the movie was not to call
them out. Same goes for black people; the point of the movie was not to shed light on the black
people problem. It was just for our enjoyment to watch, so everybody liked it (unless you
generally just werent a fan of the overall movie for whatever reason). When you look at Shit
White Girls Sayto Black Girls though, it was meant to call out the ignorant white individuals
who perpetuate this ignorant stereotype that does exist and that is why it is so heavily criticized.
People dont like to be called out, its just human nature to not want to be in the lime light for
something that is not good. Sometimes its necessary though and all it takes is some mature
enough people who do feel offended by this to really discuss these issues in order to come to a
new understanding of the issue.

Works Cited

Ji Hoon, Park, Nadine G. Gabbadon, and Ariel R. Chernin. "Naturalizing Racial

Differences Through Comedy: Asian, Black, And White Views On Racial Stereotypes In
Rush Hour 2." Journal Of Communication 56.1 (2006): 157-177. Communication &

Mass Media Complete. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/01/not-everyones-laughing-at-shit-white-girls-

say-to-black-girls/
O'Donnell, Victoria. Television Criticism. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2007. Print.