Our review of Oprah’s show on interracial relationships
CVK
On yesterday’s episode of Oprah, she interviewed Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker, stars of the new film “Something New” and talked to some real-life interracial couples.
The segment was light-hearted and humorous, so I give them props for at least not succumbing to the usual daytime talk show treatment of the subject, i.e. “I was beaten up and disowned by my parents for dating a black man who ran out on me after I gave birth to a biracial baby whose hair I have no idea how to fix and oh by the way I’m not even sure which black man is the father so I need a paternity test.”
That said, they definitely did organize the segment along some really established stereotypes: hair (why do black women stay in the hair salon for so many hours?), sex (more below), dancing (guess who does it badly?), family differences (white people play bingo, black people play spades). At the end of the segment, they had a very brief roundtable of black men talking about how they feel like they “lost a good one” when they see a “good black woman” with a white man. And of course, the only kinds of couples they showed were black/white. But that seems to be Oprah’s simplistic take on race in general (Asians? Latinos? what are those?), so no surprises there.
Okay, so the sex… this was quite horrendous. Oprah started by talking about the scene in the movie where Sanaa’s girlfriends question her about whether or not Simon is good in bed. So this leads into them asking the real interracial couples about their sex lives.
Couple 1:
The black woman says her friends told her that she should only sleep with her white boyfriend if she’s serious about staying with him because “once you go black you never go back” and she’ll never be able to get rid of him later.
Couple 2:
The white woman talks about how her friends are constantly asking if her black boyfriend is well-endowed, and she says she tells them that yes, he is, and that that particular stereotype is definitely true.
Couple 3:
The black woman says to her white boyfriend, “you love it when I do my Beyonce booty shake!”
I thought it was interesting that in every one of these couples, there was an implication that only the black partner possessed sexualized characteristics and that the white partner’s role was just to be in awe of those characteristics.
And then they got to the last couple. The black woman talks about the fact that her black girlfriends are constantly grilling her about her white boyfriend, curious as to his sexual performance. Oprah asks what types of questions they have. And the woman responds, “They’ll ask ‘is it pink?’”
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! This was even grosser than when Oprah said to a sex addict on a recent show “so these strange men ejaculate on your face?” I mean, I’m really not a prude but remarks like these just seem really inappropriate for daytime television.
Anyway, be sure to check out our in-depth and pink penis-free review of Something New on episode 16 of Addicted to Race. We absolutely loved it - so be sure to go out and support this movie!
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Mixed Media Watch - tracking media representations of mixed people on 10 Jul 2006 at 4:01 pm
[…] If these stereotypes seem familiar, it might be because they are trotted out in literally every single article about black-white interracial relationships. Also, practically every single one of these stereotypes was featured in that spectacularly bad episode Oprah did on interracial relationships. Oh, but Essence forgot one: the one about how white people can’t dance? Whew! Good thing Oprah covered that one. If you’re interested in more on how the media perpetuates endless stereotypes about interracial relationships, check out our article Media Reflects Society’s Ambivalence Toward Interracial Relationships and video clips from our New Demographic workshop, Not Just Fetishists and Race Traitors: Challenging the Ways We Look At Interracial Relationships. […]