Take a look at the picture above and observe it well. Yes I know it’s Paris Hilton. As sad as this girl is, actually pitiful is more the term I’d use, I have to think the executives at the Fox show The Simple Life are worse. That is because the talent less heiress was made up like the Great Pumpkin, or perhaps for an appearance on The Simpson’s, and that is being described their interpretation of a Black woman.
For some reason, and I am lost as to why, Paris is being changed to look Black. It has something to do with her television program that continues to be shown season after season. But I am insulted that this is what they consider Black on that program.
I don’t know when looking like Farah Fawcett with a really bad fake suntan became the equivalent of being Black. Didn’t any of them get to see the program Black.White. Couldn’t they afford that makeup team? Or did they somehow think that Mr. Gene Wilder’s comedic act of desperation, devised by Mr. Richard Pryor, from Blue Streak was somehow spot on.
I know I often joke with friends that I have the ultimate suntan base, it cost me nothing and I have it year round. Even so, a suntan is nothing like the hue I have gained from my Puerto Rican father and Black mother. Paris does not look like any Black or Hispanic person I have ever seen from anywhere in the world.
I don’t care that a low quality, mind-numbing show is using a gimmick to get viewers. I expect that, since that is the premise of the program. But I do have issue when someone tries to ‘revision’ the Al Jolson blackface just to get a ratings bump. It’s distasteful and insulting. If say Lil Kim was to appear for a show in clown white makeup, pretending to be Caucasian I think some might find that insulting. Same thing here.
If the execs at Fox have no idea of how a Black person looks, here are a couple of hints.
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