Even Jazmine is a “racial spy”
JC
Jazmine of the Boondocks has moved to a new neighborhood with her mixed family. Check out the comic from Friday where she has an interaction with a white girl who assumes that Jazmine is also white. She has what Carmen and I like to call the “racial spy” experience. It’s the phenomenon of being mixed/ambiguous-looking and hearing things that you wouldn’t otherwise hear, but that you are privy to because people don’t know what your true ethnicity is. Thanks to Dottie for the heads-up on this! ;)
daddy in a strange land wrote:
FYI Aaron McGruder’s on a six-month sabbatical from the strip–that’s a rerun from back in the day, when Jazmine was first introduced and the “multiracial nationalists” started freaking out about her portrayal and both McGruder’s and Huey’s treatment of her vis-a-vis her racial identity. Ah, memories… ;)
Posted 16 Apr 2006 at 7:03 pm ¶
eric wrote:
this is actually a curse in some ways. Alot of my own ideas of who I can and cannot trust were shaped at an early age when because of my light skin and my academic prowess most kids in my town deemed me “not black” and proceeded to talk about blacks as if I were not in the room. Needldess to say it was an unpleasant experience, so I can sympathize with ‘ol jazzie
Posted 16 Apr 2006 at 9:34 pm ¶
K-Pow wrote:
Oh I hate being a racial spy. My first experience was in college and it totally upsetting experience. But at least you get the oppotunity to catch people off guard and get to know what they are REALLY like. Can’t say I’ve had any new experiences…
Posted 22 Apr 2006 at 4:30 pm ¶
Dave wrote:
It would be nice to see a comic strip (and cartoon) about a white/black biracial written by someone who identifies as white/black biracial. Sometimes Jazmine comes off like a foil for McGruder to promote one-drop identity, in my opinion. For example, here:
http://www.mixedfolks.com/comics.htm
That’s his freedom, but it would be nice to see the comics someone with Jazmine’s actual perspective and identity would write.
Posted 23 Apr 2006 at 10:01 pm ¶