What do POC think of the scene in Fresh Prince when Carlton is rejected from a black fraternity for being a “sellout”?
What do POC think of the scene in Fresh Prince when Carlton is rejected from a black fraternity for being a “sellout”?
Is the message of the episode good or bad? It gives vibes of “wealth = success” and “I can’t help it if I’m rich” which is kind of shitty.
The episode ends with an explicit question: “When are we gonna stop doing this to each other?” which seems to imply that it is the black community that is holding itself back.
Did this episode age like milk, or is it a valid perspective within the black/POC community?
Also thoughts on the show in general?
idk as an Asian Brit, all I could think about here was how horrifying American frat culture is tbh
In my uni there were lots of student groups, clubs, and societies for various sorts of identities and everybody is accepted at first. There isn't any weird gatekeeping or vetting process like American frats do
Interestingly enough Will and Carlton both have their head on straight. Will emphasized the frat should accept Carlton because he's a dedicated and hard working person, not because of his "high class personality/lineage". Carlton talked about not being class reductionist (but like in the inverse direction? Either way Carlton himself I don't think is really exploiting anybody)
It's only the dad that brought up bad messaging
Frats are just tutorial for country clubs
At least in the Bengali diaspora, success and working within the capitalist system is very much rewarded and respected. Bengali men in the West are raised to very much to take advantage of the system without questioning whether the system is fair in the first place.
My dad is a pretty insufferable lib. Much of that comes from wanting to assimilate into US culture. He watches CNN and has reactionary takes on most things.
Not being a successful middle/upper class professional with a marriage and family is looked down upon in a lot of Bengali immigant spaces. Being any sort of leftist or rocking the boat is looked down even further, god forbid if you're neurodivergent.
In short, at least from where I was raised, there isn't a drive to be "bengali" in a rebellious cultural sense but to take as much as you can from the dominant American culture. Of course, this backfires in a capitalist society where many second and third gen deshis lose their unique communal family culture. My dad still complains that his son (my brother) married a Black Christian woman from Trinidad instead of "within the race" or of course, a white woman.
I can't confidently speak for how deshi women are raised though.
TL;DR the situation from this video would be reversed.
Edit: not to say that nationalism within deshi spaces does not exist, but the fact that it's very entertwined with capitalism and class elevation rather than something like Black nationalism.
I mean, as a white person I feel like I can at least comment that it kinda comes off like it's at least to some extent aimed for me to sorta cheer on from the sidelines for.
Can't exactly comment on wether a scene like this ought to have that vibe or not for white people, but it does make me stop and think like, hang on a minute.
FWIW, F.D Signifier had a bit to say on the topic last week: Bamboozled and the complexity of Co*ns
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I don't like it. It's a thing within American media to mock cultural nationalists and diasporic people who try to connect to their roots. Black cultural nationalists get caricatured as unserious people walking around with dashikis and African continent necklaces. There's a push towards assimilation within white settler society, whether it's getting the POC character to lament how they're forever "too white among POCs but too POC among white people" or POC actors being forced to put on a minstrel performance for the amusement of a white audience. You rarely see a culturally connected POC character who isn't also a walking stereotype show up and put the banana/oreo/coconut in their place.
This clip is basically the "too white for Black people, too Black for white people" Black character putting the Black character who's definitely not too white for Black people in his place.
Thanks, good points.
It rubbed me the wrong way too. The message seems to be: The aspiration for POC, the solution to their problems is to become white / become bourgeois. That racial struggle is essentially a positive struggle to become bourgeois, not a negative struggle against a racist class society.
The goal of bourgeois society is to make wealth appear accidental. Being rich is then seen as a natural attribute on the same level as having dark skin. So to criticize someone for being rich can then be seen as equal to racial discrimination. Never mind that wealth is directly tied to the conditions of society itself, and that in capitalist society, the capitalists' wealth is causally tied to the poverty of the masses.
It's garbage cause it's a scene made for white people in mind
I think at the time, there were people who didn't even know that type of attitude existed, so getting it out on prime time television was big.
I also think that one-shot characters have to be over exaggerated to get their entire being from introduction to resolution shoved into a 22 minute TV show which can be detrimental.
I think the fact that this episode is still today sparking discussion shows how well it was done, but I think there's a lot more story there to flesh out instead of making things so black & white.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: