"Jungle Fever"

Yes, that is the name of this opinion piece that showed up published by the UC Davis Aaggie newspaper. I think the title gives you a good idea of what this article talks about, but in case it doesn't, go read it. I'm not giving a summary.

Now, while the article itself upsets me a great deal, what I want to discuss is the reaction to the article, not from the online readers, but from my classmates.

I was in my African American literature class discussing the way 19th century authors aestheticized the tragic mulatto,  which turned into the ways the tragic mulatto was sexualized, which eventually had this article brought up, and then all hell broke lose in class. Almost everyone had something to say about the article and most of those opinions ran along the lines of "the writer is ignorant" through "she's just a racist b-----", only more kindly put. Anyway, there were three comments that angered me.

The first went along the lines of 'she's (the author of the opinion) isn't really responsible for her opinions since all she want's to do is fall in love with 'black' men and understand the culture. We shouldn't fault her for not knowing enough of the culture to understand the racist associations behind the terms she used'.

Do you see the problem with this argument?

I understand where this classmate is coming from. I do. I don't agree with it one bit but I can understand not wanting to malign someone who may just not know what she's talking about. The problem here is that first off, if she wants to know more about the African American culture, how the hell do you not try to find out what kinds of racist and derogatory terms have been used against that culture to try and avoid it? And I might be able to buy the 'she didn't know any better' argument had she not used the term Jungle Fever.

How the hell do you know that term exists and not know its historical significance? 

I don't get it. I really don't. She tries to come off as loving African American culture by saying she enjoys hip-hop and rap and...that's it. To her, that's all one needs to appreciate the culture. Or maybe that's all she thinks the culture is about, but I don't think that's true.

See, she says all the things she's enjoying about 'black' culture and then says something like:

" I’m a tall Indian girl, who can seem reserved and awkward at first"; " Something about being able to identify the obscure rappers that showed up randomly in the music videos made me feel like a music connoisseur"; "By the end of summer, I was not only darker in skin tone"; " Here was this quiet Indian girl who seemed like nothing more than a hard-working student and now she’s in the living room teaching people how to dougie and yelling about how much she loves Drake"; "So next time you’re at a party, don’t be surprised if you see me trying to jerk and cat daddy at the same time to impress that hot Drake look-alike in the corner. Don’t hate, I’m just being me.

MEDHA SRIDHAR loves her dark chocolate. If you want to accompany her to a BSU meeting, contact her at mdsridhar@ucdavis.edu".

These kinds of comments make me think what she's looking for is validation of her 'coolness' and not so much  reaching out to members of the African American community for help in understanding the culture.

Honestly, I think this is a little girl (mentally, at least), wanting to be rebellious and finding the safest way of doing so is to publicly proclaim her attraction to a group of men that has historically been associated with the 'bad' things in life by the racists of society. That in itself is racism and while I'm angry over her own ignorance about these things.

I'm even more upset that while I tried explaining my view point in class another classmate decided it was perfectly find to interrupt me and try to counter my argument only after I'd said, "her words angered me and her position is clearly racist" (paraphrased of course). The fact that it was a 'white' English international student who interrupted me during a heated discussion on racism pissed me off even more.

The third comment that upset me was by a student who gain, re-iterated the need to educate but NOT to berate the ignorant. To her I say this; once you refuse to allow the ignorant person to hear how upset, hurt, and angry she/he can make others feel and only treat her/him with kid gloves a la 'oh, its OK. We can teach you thing, you're not a bad person' you invalidate the anger hurt those racist comments create within the community being attacked. Whether or not those attacks were intentional doesn't excuse the fact that the hurt was caused.

Isn't it something along the lines of "ignorance of the law isn't an excuse for the breaking of it," or some variation thereof?