Halle Berry calls out BBC DJ on racist impersonation
CVK
(Thanks to Susan Ayoob for this tip!) Nice job, Halle! Check out this story from MSNBC:
What was meant to be a friendly chat to promote the new “X-Men” movie turned into a frosty discussion about race on a popular morning radio program, but the British Broadcasting Corp. defended its disc jockey.
Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry appeared on Chris Moyles’ Radio One breakfast show Thursday and clashed with her host after he impersonated what he described as a “big, fat, black guy.”
“Are we having a racist moment here?” Berry, the first black actress to win an Academy Award for a lead role, asked Moyles after she took exception to his impersonation. Moyles, who is white, said he just couldn’t do American accents.
“There was nothing racist in what Chris said, and he made that clear on air,” a BBC spokesman said Friday on condition of anonymity, in line with the corporation’s policy.
The exchange began when Hugh Jackman, Berry’s “X-Men: The Last Stand” co-star, jokingly suggested that Moyles might take the role of his body double if he ever landed the part of James Bond.
“I could definitely do that,” Moyles said before adding, “Put your hands in the air!”
A somewhat puzzled Jackman replied, “Are you some kind of Brooklyn Bond?”
Moyles replied: “I’m a black American guy. A big, fat, black guy. Put your hands up in the air.”
The interview continued, though the DJ later said Berry was “ratty” — British slang for grouchy.
Raise your hand if you’ve come across this exact kind of situation before. I know I have - most often in the workplace, and I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been as upfront as Halle about calling people out on it. It seems like people are constantly doing these voices or impersonations or using slang that’s supposed to be “black,” and it’s one of those borderline situations where it’s just racist enough to get my attention but perhaps not obvious enough that I feel comfortable pinpointing exactly what’s wrong with it and letting the person know. But I think that if it happens in the future, I might just run with Halle’s line and turn it into a question: “Are we having a racist moment here?” ;)
vegankid » stand by your man on 07 Jun 2006 at 10:10 am
[…] You may remember a couple of weeks ago when BBC radio host Chris Moyles decided to do his impersonation of a “big, fat black guy” for Halle Berry. Berry’s unrelenting stance that this racist impersonation deserved punishment and an apology really won me a lot of respect for her. But MS. Berry, in the end, is just another Black womyn - not the BBC’s high-brow target audience. So the BBC’s Board of Governors decided unilaterally that Moyles’ impersonation was, in fact, not racist and that MS. Berry was simply getting riled up over nothing. Another case of the hyper-sensitive, hyper-defensive Black womyn syndrome, of course. White people sure know how to serve us some justice, don’t we? We’re experts on what is and isn’t racist. We should be, right? After all, we created it. […]