Interracial family on Nanny 911 tonight
CVK
Tonight’s Nanny 911 on Fox is going to feature a mixed family, The Georges (pictured). Now I realize I may be reading way too much into it, but I can’t help but think that their choice of words on the Web site to describe the family is interesting. Why a prison metaphor? Because dude is black?
The world of pies, well-balanced meals and homemaking can be a cruel and thankless place–just ask domestic diva Martha Stewart. Jeffrey, 26, a stay-at-home dad, knows all too well what it feels like to be imprisoned, however unlike Martha he is under house arrest because of his children Imari, 4, Kobi, 2 and Kadin, 2. Jeffrey raises the children while wife Theresa, 34, works to bring home the bacon as a financial analyst.
P.Moore wrote:
Why you gotta go and say “dude” when addressing the Black guy? What’s that about? Totally kidding. That did give me a laugh though. The thought of Black men and jail has permeated its way into so many levels of our psyche as a society. I didn’t even get mad reading this. It was more like a smirk and a shaking of the head.
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 12:46 pm ¶
Rachel S wrote:
The prisoner analogy is a bit much. I guess they will used the show to prove the interracial couples can malsocialize their children just like everybody else. LOL!!! It seems like they always portray the stay at home parents as the underappreciated and controlled, but I don’t know that they use the term prisoner.
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 1:02 pm ¶
mamazilla wrote:
i dunno… as a stay at home mom of two, i can totally relate when another stay at home parent feels like he/she is a prisoner.
some days it’s brutal and oftentimes thankless… parenthood is truly part joy, part guerilla warfare.
although i’m skeptical… i’d give the website the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 1:58 pm ¶
mtevc wrote:
as a writer, we need to think about how people perceive these things we say, and the images we use for a story…this one is too blatant to ignore…i am so anti-PC…but the black guy and the prison imagery, well…that’s awful…and i bet the writer didn’t realize it or mean it…but it doesn’t matter…
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 3:34 pm ¶
Nina wrote:
Jeffrey, 26, a stay-at-home dad, knows all too well what it feels like to be IMPRISONED, however unlike Martha he is under HOUSE ARREST because of his children Imari, 4, Kobi, 2 and Kadin, 2. Jeffrey raises the children while wife Theresa, 34, works to bring home the bacon as a financial analyst.
——————
Translation: It’s hard out here for a pimp!
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 5:18 pm ¶
daddy in a strange land wrote:
Funny on what you pick up on when you’re focused on one particular topic or another… I’m a hapa stay-at-home-dad. I picked up the race stuff you mentioned, but also saw the “Martha Stewart/domestic diva” references as sort of a Mr. Mom-ish type thing, as in, let’s see if this GUY measures up as a homemaker, since, you know, he’s a GUY. So it’s got racial stereotypes AND gender role stereotypes, yah!
Hmmm… We’ll see what they do with all this. (BTW, I linked to your post and wrote about this on Rice Daddies, the Asian American dad group blog, this morning.)
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 5:45 pm ¶
Darla wrote:
Uhhhh, pretty sure the whole “imprisoned” statement is referenicng to Martha’s time in jail:
“knows all too well what it feels like to be imprisoned, HOWEVER UNLIKE MARTHA. . .”
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 6:02 pm ¶
Keya wrote:
Yup, I totally agree with you. They wouldn’t of said that if it was a white mom.
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 6:07 pm ¶
wt wrote:
hard to say on this one. definitely can understand how someone can be sensitive about this and feel its a(nother) negative portrayal of Black men in the media. but to me, it’s more clearly a jab at Martha here. it may be both, and can understandably be perceived as both. folks should be more in touch with what their audience may hear, though. isn’t that what we learned in 7th grade English class? write to your audience?
Posted 17 Mar 2006 at 7:18 pm ¶
justin wrote:
So I was watching fox news and they were talking about expiry dates on girl scout cookies. The white female presenter turned to the black male presenter and started questioning him about the shelf life of Oreos. He didn’t know the answer and they didn’t explain why the lady thought he would. Then they cut to a clip of the black presenter and some white men singing along with Roberta Flack. I think I’m losing my mind, sometimes.
Posted 19 Mar 2006 at 1:18 pm ¶