Maury Sets Us Back Four Hundred Years..

Watching Maury, I'm starting to get why African-Americans, or Black-Americans of African descent, as a whole seem to suffer from a negative stereotyping and stigma in the media and on the international scale. And we do it to ourselves. We allow ourselves to present to the world an uneducated, loud, obnoxious and rude picture of ourselves, instead of showing people that we ARE in fact intelligent. And the virus seems to be spreading. And, yes, I called it a virus because I speak, talk, write and act professional however a LOT of my people don't seem to want to. I don't wear clothes that clearly mark me as some video-vixen-wanna-be nor do I keep up with the latest fads that sweep through my people every time one of their favorite rappers or singers deem it the 'hot, new thing'.

MAny times as a child I've been of accused of acting white, talking white, and essentially just not being Black at all. I'm light-skinned to a degree and while I've never had too much negativity surrounding that fact, I have been told by my own family members that the older generations would like me more because of the fact that I am lighter than my own mother. My father has been accused of being half-white (and while that's not too much of a stretch from the truth--my father is of mixed descent--it still irks me to no end).

I see how the media portrays us, and it irritates me that there is no other stereotype to balance that out. With white people, you've got two stereotypes: the red neck, uneducated, racist hick and then you've got the beautiful, model, stock broker, businessman. You see either one portrayed on the media. Black people: you usually only get the obnoxious negro.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't positive role models for blacks, but then they come under fire for not being black enough. And it's a never ending, vicious cycle.