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“There’s a video I want you to see,” my roommate Kate told me earlier this week. “I think it might be really bad.”
Of course that piqued my interest. “Bad” You Tube videos come in many different flavors: Would this video be poor quality, offensive, or just plain bizarre? With wide eyes and low expectations, I turned toward Kate’s computer.
The Fox MADtv clip featured an overly eager, cornrowed and do-ragged black man intent on winning a white woman at the cinema. “Excu’e me can I tal’ to you fo’ a minu’e? Uh, yeah, my name Darrell. It’s spelled like DARE-el but it’s pronounced Duh-RELL. Yeah, I just wanted to let you know, the back of yo’ head is redikuhlous!” With boyish energy, freakish bug eyes, and an obsessive curiosity about the woman’s nonexistent boyfriend, the man proceeds to ask her urgently: “Can I ha’ yo’ numbuh?” This becomes the catch phrase of the skit, with the man repeating his request to the end.
“Where did this come from?” I asked Kate.
Apparently, after the Bible study she co-leads, someone had opened their laptop to show a couple videos. “Oh, wait, have y’all seen ‘Can I have your number?’” one of the women asked. Those familiar repeated key words and phrases, mimicking the video’s mock Ebonics with an awkwardness only white people can pull off.
Kate chuckled at parts, as the video was truly “redikuhlous” in every sense of the word. Still, she thought the video was racist, and I completely agreed. The clip blends versions of the black stereotypes that have existed since U.S. slavery—the “Buck” stereotype of hypersexuality with the infantilized stupidity of the “Sambo”—making African-American men out to be inconsiderate fools. I don’t know any black men that behave in such a manner, and these generalizations are obviously offensive, inappropriate, and unfair.
On the other hand, I think the clip does convey a sliver of truth. Even if its portrayal of black men is inaccurate, it shows that someone somewhere finds the way a subset of black men interact with women to be both humorous and disgusting when compared with assumed mainstream (read: white U.S. American) norms. This focused on supposed differences can lead us to consider a larger issue at hand: If not exactly as the video portrays, how do we behave when we’re interacting across both gender and cultural lines?
Every (sub-)cultural group has its own flirtation norms, meaning that when individuals of two cultures interact, they’re often playing by two sets of rules. Men and women are frequently on separate pages already, so compounding that existing divide with an ethnic-or class-based cultural gap can make communication quite complex, especially when it comes to initiating (or stalling) romance.
I think for us as egalitarians, these cultural differences make life pretty darn tricky. Sometimes the male-female scripts of a particular culture don’t seem to match up with my egalitarian ideals, and it’s easy to rush to (sometimes inaccurately) label others as sexist. My lack of cultural fluency sometimes leaves me confused about whether a man is hitting on me or how to I might respond appropriately, which might in extreme situations lead to cases of potential sexual harassment, as one culture would define. And obviously, ignorance paired with prejudice leads to the kind of media portrayal we see in this video.
The long-term solution, I think, is to pair our work for local and global gender equality with intentional efforts to understand people that are culturally different from us. As we get to know them and get to know ourselves, we’ll be able to live together with less miscommunication. Greater clarity in all relationships will benefit cross-gender relations, as well, as we begin to understand the rules that dictate flirting, friendship, and the like. Plus, confusing—even offending—each other gives us practice embracing patience and grace.
In the meantime, any thoughts on navigating male-female interaction across the cultural divide?
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