Tiger Woods?

Why did he marry a white woman in the whitest sport still in the world ...cept maybe motocross?

Cause she made him socially equal to the men he was already physically and mentally superior to....well, till he married her....whoops!

This may seem like a semantic point, but it's a profound issue that the writer of this article, the readers of this article, and the vast majority of people who see "Something New" are going to face. Racism is not the same as prejudice. The writer of this article says that Kenya's black women friends have racist attitudes because they make unfavorable assumptions about white people. These assumptions and attitudes are prejudices, not racist attitudes.

One widely-held definition of racism is that racism is prejudice PLUS power. In America, from the time of its birth as a nation until the present moment, white people have power. Let me clarify.

1. Having power doesn't necessarily mean being the majority in a society. In apartheid South Africa and the Indian subcontinent under British colonial domination, white people were in the minority, but they controlled the land, resources, capital, infrastructure, educational systems, and (most importantly) military of these territories.

2. Racially oppressed groups (again, not the same as racial minorities) can participate in institutions that enforce white power. For example, in the U.S., just because many black people serve as security guards, police personnel, and military servicepeople does not mean that security businesses, municipal police forces or the American military as a whole act to protect the interests of black people. They instead act to protect the interests of white people and of white power.

3. Whiteness, blackness, redness and brownness are all, fundamentally, myths. There is no such thing as race. There is no biological characteristic called race. Two people of the same race can vary more in their genetic makeup that two people of different races. In Toni Morrison's words, "Race is one of the least important pieces of information you can have about a person". It's as irrelevant as height. That said, although race does not exist in a biological sense, it exists in the social sense and is a very, very, very, very, very powerful idea in American society.

Here are two papers that are very good at explicating this issue in more depth than I can herein:

"Racism: It's Not Just About Attitudes!" by Harvey H. Millar

http://husky1.stmarys.ca/~hmillar/racism.htm

"The Undergirding Factor is Power" by Caleb Rosado

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/caleb/racism.html

Well aren't we full of ourselves. While more black men marry/couple outside of their race than black women, the vast majority of blacks who are married/coupled (the last time I looked at the Census figures it was either 83 or 85%) have a black partner.

If landscape architect is now the "rugged job du jour" for romantic comedies, when will Hollywood pull its head out and learn what the job actually entails?

It entails an office and a computer. NOT a rake and shovel.

Not quite Charles. But yeah maybe black women need to quit the one-sided loyalty if that's what you mean.

I love this reasoning: Black men go off with white/non-black women because they have been conditioned to by a racist America and don't see how wonderful every single black woman on earth, while black women go off with non-black partners because they have finally opened their minds and let go of seeing color. So again, black men=no good, black women=all good. And this isn't the first time I have read a letter like this. So thoroughly annoying. In all honesty, I don't know any group of women that is so myopically fixated on keeping it "in the race" like black women.

On topic-I have heard the movie's great, I agree that Lathan is stunning and a great actor who deserves a hell of a lot better than she has gotten lately. Hopefully this will begin to turn things around for her.

I know plenty of black women who are afraid of spiders. Especially the ones who grew up in cities and didn't have a whole lot of experience with spiders.

I think that comment on the part of the reviewer shows that she has stereotypical attitudes about femininity and black women, which makes her review suspect.

The real controversy surronding "Something New" along with many other American-made romantic comedies is the disturbing trend where the Romantic Men in these movies are played with increasing frequency by Brits, Australians, and Kiwis that put on their fake American accents. Can producers in Hollywood find no decent US born actor to play in these parts?

I just saw the movie---it's funny, romantic and formulaic with just the right amount of male and female eye candy, as all such movies are supposed to be. There are a few jokes that will especially appeal to professional black people, but I think everyone can enjoy it. And even though the white guy gets the black girl, the movie portrays black men in general in a very positive light.

While I felt Stephanie Zacharek's review was an insightful and generally accurate account of the movie, I disagree with her reading of the scene where Kenya and her crew observe a black man fawning over his white partner and one sistah laments: "That is the reason why 42.4% of black women are unmarried." In response to the scene, Ms. Zacharek recognizes the dismay black women feel watching their male counterparts choose white partners, however, is also relieved to see that the film makes it clear that Kenya's buddies ultimately realize that "[the] 'white women are stealing our good black men' charge is a convenient fallback mechanism, a way of blaming someone else -- anyone else -- for unruly and unpredictable social realities." To any educated and sensible African-American woman, Ms. Zacharek's insinuation that sistahs are looking to somehow "blame" white women for prowling to snatch up all the ideal black men (IBM) is ridiculous and condescending. Nowhere in that scene and in the entire film, for that matter, does any black woman accuse white women of "stealing" their men, and those of us who ponder, discuss, and analyze the forces that affect our lives know that these so-called "unruly and unpredictable social realities" that ultimately produce lonely black women are neither intangible nor random. And, for God's sake, NOBODY believes they're inspired by some mythic notion of the unscrupulous white seductress out to poach Mandingo.

One does not have to look very far or think too hard to figure out why black women searching for IBM often end up unwanted and alone. Many black men who date white women do not do so merely because those happen to be the ladies they most often meet and with whom they have the most in common. Many black men CHOOSE to exclusively date white women and are socially validated in their rejection of black women because, all of us, black, white, yellow, red, live in the same America, watch TV, absorb popular culture, and are subject to the same historico-social influences, media, etc. Black men cannot be expected to close their eyes and ignore the fact that all women are evaluted according to the same ridiculously narrow standards of beauty, desirability, and acceptability. They are offered the same American standards of masculine success through the acquisition of popular status symbols like cash, cars, and trophy wives. And, according to pervasive notions of female hotness, anyone who is not white, blonde, thin, and under 25 years old does not get much exposure, and therefore is not considered a prime candidate for the lustful or loving attention of men, black or white. In addition to placing very low in mainstream society's heirarchy of physical desirability, black women also suffer the additional burden of being socially viewed as either matronly and obese, or the clearest antithesis to the ideal of quiet feminine submissiveness, with all this "attitude" as shrill, emasculating, poison tongued, neck wiggling, eye rolling harpies, who will surely cut a dick off before having to toe the mainstream line of submitting to it.

What I do agree with in Stephanie Zacharek's review, and also, what I like most about the film was how they both acknowledge that yes, black women are having a hell of a time breaking through the barriers that prevent us from finding love, but we can't just sit around and pooh pooh our sad circumstance. It is unfair that the black men we have traditionally counted on for love, acceptance, and a unified, supportive union against a hostile society are no longer readily available, or necessarily inclined to exclusively commit to us. However, sistahs have to challenge our own views and stereotypes surrounding men of other races and surmount our fear of being ostracized by our friends and family, who, in a natural reaction to social rejection, racism, and agression, have closed ranks and decided that the crackers must be kept at a comfortable distance. Near the end of the film the lead character Kenya comes to the realization that while it may be difficult to get a good black man, it's even more of a challenge to find ANY man with whom she can connect, exhale, and be thoroughly "naked" in her person and her soul. When she does meet that amazing IBM, who is an ideal match to what she had wanted for so long, she realizes that her values have changed and is forced to choose between authenticity and acceptance.

Like Kenya, I too had very specific criteria that defined my IBM and ended up alone throughout the better part of my 20s waiting for that brothah. I met two or three very decent black guys who seemed ideal, whom my family just loved and everybody felt were perfect for me, however, with these particular guys I felt no connection, fire, or a shared vision of growth and evolution. Undetered, I stuck to my dream of finding the IBM and even wrote my list of requirements down on a piece of paper, giving it all up to Universe in hopes of manifesting this vision into a real live human being, of course, with the black part being non-negotiable. Funny enough, we always get exactly what we need, and if we're fortunate, it might actually coincide with what we ostensibly want. I met the absolutely perfect guy, who also couldn't believe how lucky he was to have found ME. I was somehow miraculously able to check off every single fussy little standard on my list, everything on the wish list for the IBM except the B part. The man I fell in love with and married is Russian-Israeli, and I would have never allowed myself the joy of knowing and loving this amazing creature, had I not one day slapped me in the face and said, get over yourself, this is love, this is a soulmate and he happens to come wrapped in this particularly non-black package.