Long-time reader of Shadow And Act, Mr Accidental Visitor (AV) penned the below piece, which he sent to me, and asked if I’d post it. You know how we love to inspire dialogue on this site; I’m hoping this post will do just that.

Here ya go… Read on… and certainly share your thoughts with AV in the comments section below:

Allison Samuel’s Guide to Finding a Good, Non-Black Man
By Accidental Visitor

Most of us have our share of inner demons. But few of us have the opportunity to put them out there on full display for the masses as Allison Samuels has. Not that that’s necessarily a good thing. Lately around these parts there have been ongoing comments regarding  the sanity of film critic Armond White. But I wonder if Ms Samuels hasn’t earned a rightful place alongside him in the bat-crazy Hall of Fame.

For those of you who aren’t aware of Allison Samuels let me provide an introduction. She is a black writer of some renown for Newsweek magazine. I can’t tell you for certain what her specialty is for the magazine, but if I had to venture a guess I would suspect her job is to be the expert of all things African American (no easy assignment there for sure). Recently Ms. Samuels has added to her brilliant collection of commentary when she addressed the coming release of the widely anticipated Disney animated film The Princess and the Frog.  [http://www.newsweek.com/id/223508]  Ms. Samuels’ writeup was one of the earliest reviews for the film used by the website Rotten Tomatoes. Her consensus? Not only does she feel that the animated movie is wonderful, she also thinks that it’s a perfect tool to introduce black girls, and black women in general, to the concept of miscegenation.

Now before I dive into Samuels’ fascinating take on the film I feel a little more back story should be provided regarding some of her earlier and more infamous articles.  Allison Samuels is someone who gained my attention years ago. One of the earliest pieces she wrote found her bemoaning the lack of attention being given to former African American child star, Raven-Symone. She was unhappy over the fact that women like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan were hogging all the attention from the celebrity media hounds and was bewildered over why Symone wasn’t…um…fortunate to get her share. So she decided to use the pages of Newsweek to seek justice for this oversight and played the race card to explain  why an unfair press wasn’t camped outside Symone’s home. Essentially Samuels ended up begging (demanding) that the paparazzi stalk Raven-Symone during her every waking moment.

Last year Samuels shared some more interesting thoughts when she wrote that many black women like her voted for Barack Obama mostly to get Michelle Obama in the White House as the first black First Lady. Now while I believe there were African American women who indeed felt that way, I don’t think it was too wise to actually admit to it. It makes one look like a flake, a person  who would vote for a President for the most superficial of reasons.

But Samuels is most known for her dishing out parental advice to Angelina Jolie. Jolie, as some folks know, adopted an Ethiopian girl, Zahara,  years back. The way she describes it that adoption of Zahara was apparently one of the proudest moments of Ms. Samuel’s life. But she grew sour on the whole idea after seeing, at the time, recent photos of Zahara and discovered to her horror that Jolie had the audacity to allow the girl’s hair to remain natural and curly. Zahara’s hair had in fact mushroomed out into a cute little bush. Samuels found this unacceptable and took pains to explain to Jolie (and I guess all the other white parents with black daughters who happen to have a Newsweek subscription) how one should groom the hair of little black girls. This wouldn’t have come across so bad if she had injected more of a “wink and a nod” to indicate her commentary was not to be taken too seriously. However Samuels was very sober in her approach. Frankly  the article came across to many as intrusive and tacky. It was also a tad creepy when Samuels indicated how much she had kept up with all the stories and photos of Zahara. It was as if the little girl was one of her kin. And it wasn’t exactly a high point when Samuels compared Jolie unfavorably to Madonna who had been inspired to be just as trendy by adopting an African girl of her own. Samuels gave Madonna thumbs up because she had given her daughter cornrows.

In her writeup for The Princess and the Frog Allison Samuels proves to be still a tad eccentric. She thought such a review would be the perfect opportunity to discuss the old argument about who black men choose as their mates. She mentions that 14 percent of black men in the USA marry outside their race compared to 4 percent of black women. According to her line of thinking this means black women are more loyal to the idea of the black family unit (goes as far to claim that black women are “noble” to be loyal to that idea). She suggests that keeping the black family together is a wonderful goal but one that black females can’t be burdened with to achieve on their own. She states that the movie’s message is for people to look beyond color when seeking love. And she hopes that black women use Tiana (that’s the name of the lead character of the movie) as a model for how to live their lives.

Really? She got all that from a cartoon? To think all this time I felt Disney’s principal underlying message for this movie was : Christmas is approaching so please buy the dolls.

Where do I start? I don’t necessarily trust Ms. Samuels’ stats about the percentages of black men who marry outside the race. The last figures I read on those was that 8 percent of African American men married outside their race while 5 percent of African American women did. That’s from a report I read nearly ten years ago and my unscientific observations would suggest that there has been an increase in black women who have become involved in interracial marriages. But none of that matters. Let’s say I accept Samuels’ numbers. Its still only 14 percent. That’s not exactly an epidemic nor does that number suggests that black men have given up on the black family. Truth is African Americans, men and women, date and marry outside of their race far less than any racial group in America. So while there is plenty of blame to go around concerning the disintegration of the African American two parent home,  interracial pairings isn’t exactly one of them. And frankly the teeth gnashing over who black men may choose to date or marry is tiresome.  White male/Asian female pairings are the most common interracial coupling and something tells me white guys don’t get nearly as much grief.

Ms. Samuels says that this cartoon fairy tale can serve as an inspiration for black women to seek out men of other races. Heck, I thought that was the purpose of  Something New. In all seriousness there have be a number of movies in which a black female character is romantically involved with a male character who isn’t black. So there’s no need for Samuels to pin all her hopes on the   shoulders of an animated feature. Regardless unless I’m mistaken none of these  films I’m referring to exactly opened the floodgates  for real life interracial relationships. That’s probably because these films weren’t intentionally trying to push an agenda and because audiences tend to watch movies to be entertained, not to use them as a guide for their lives. Tyler Perry films excluded of course.

Actually it’s insulting to even suggest that black women needed the Wonderful World of Disney to let them know that they had options in the first place. It’s just a suspicion on my part, but I believe they would have learned of that secret long before standing in line at the multiplex to purchase a ticket for The Princess and the Frog. It is also disingenuous of Ms Samuels to imply that black women  have not crossed the racial boundary because of some misguided nobility. That is an eye-rolling level of condescending and simplistic thinking.

As for little black girls they have years ahead of them in which they grow and gain valuable insight about love,  relationships, emotional happiness and pain, etc. These life experiences will be far more responsible than movies when it comes to who they choose as a mate. Movies don’t shape them on this issue nearly as much as life itself does. Hollywood films mostly present idealized versions of romances. Fairy tale universes in which beautiful people overcome all obstacles to live happily ever after as a couple. There isn’t anything wrong with wanting to achieve such a similar state of happiness in our real world. But the real world presents far more complications.  Young ladies of all races and nationalities have longed to be swept off their feet  by  the dashing prince or the white knight. Young men fantasize about being involved with hot babes like Megan Fox who can be the damsel in distress that they end up saving. It’s all fun and good but none of it should serve as a template for how they try to live their lives.

I think Samuels is giving Disney too much credit for the message about love knowing no boundaries.  I don’t think it’s all that surprising that the first interracial romance for a fictional heroine in a Disney cartoon (the “Pocahontas”  film was loosely based on the life and relationships of a real historical figure of course)  happens to be for a movie in which the heroine is black.  Does anyone believe Disney would have invested so much cash in a film that was to have a  black prince as well as a young black couple in love? Let’s get real. The company would have seen that as a harder sell both domestically and abroad.  Originally the prince in the story was supposed to be European. Once some grumbling occurred over that idea the studio decided to compromise and make  the prince a character of some undefined racial category but one who, as Samuels  is quick to point out with perhaps a tinge of glee, “clearly isn’t African American.”

No one should be more familiar with Hollywood’s reluctance to use black couples than Alison Samuels. Back in the middle years of this decade, Hispanic actress Eve Mendes was quoted as saying she was cast to play the love interest of black leading men like Denzel Washington and Will Smith because studios were not comfortable with pairing them with white actresses. Mendes made mention that Hollywood execs felt that casting a black actress alongside black male stars may lead to the impression that the movie was targeting a black audience instead of a wider audience. So Hollywood was left with a dilemma of how to deal with portraying the romantic lives of African American male movie stars on the big screen in certain films. The arrival of a new wave of Hispanic actresses gave them a solution.

Eve Mendes stated in her interviews that she thought it was backwards for Hollywood to be so against using white female stars to be the onscreen lovers of black men. That was the main issue she was trying to address when breaching the topic of her casting. And for a moment there it looked that if the rest of the media picked up on it the press would finally have to discuss this longstanding taboo for once.  Discuss why then and now it’s so much easier in Hollywood to have Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton very intimate in Mission Impossible II but be so much more restrained with a Will Smith and Charlize Theron in Hancock. Why it is okay for Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston to be lovers in The Bodyguard when Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts can barely touch hands in the Pelican Brief.

But Allison Samuels swooped in to make sure that wasn’t the conversation that took place. Samuels was ONLY interested in why Hollywood was so against having black couples at the center of mainstream films. Well, actually she gave that troubling issue lip service at best. Her main fear, which she spread like a strong wind on a brush fire, was that black actresses were going to be shut out of roles in Hollywood. It didn’t matter that black male stars like Washington, Smith, Eddie Murphy, etc have had more black leading ladies than non-black leading ladies and that surely that was going to continue. No, Ms. Samuels went into full-crisis mode anyway and used her job at Newsweek to imply that the black actress was an endangered species. She interviewed black actresses such as Nia Long who bought into Samuels’ brand of hysteria and asked aloud how will black women ever get work. This was particularly outrageous considering at the time Long had just done in a film in which she had a large role playing the love interest of a white male lead.

So I must say I find it amusing that Allison Samuels who once was so very concerned about the dearth of black couples on the big screen seems so very at ease now with the notion of onscreen pairings involving black women and men who aren’t black. I find it amusing but I don’t find it surprising because her original motives were always clear. As long as the black stars of the day were black men and Hollywood movies would be made for them, she so desperately yearned for racial solidarity. That meant black actresses were the ones she wanted to be cast alongside Denzel during those times the script required his character to have a love interest. But now that we are entering an age where possibly more black actresses such as Halle Berry, Beyonce, Kerry Washington and Zoe Saldana (as well as an animated black beauty named Tiana) can be headliners of major motion pictures, I don’t think she will be championing the idea of the black couple nearly as much.  And I don’t think there will be any calls placed to dudes like Derek Luke in which she expresses her concerns that black actors aren’t getting cast as love interests for today’s hottest black actresses.

It’s this type of blatant hypocrisy which makes me weary of Samuels’ commentaries. And it’s this same hypocrisy that probably explains her indifference to another issue that has barely been touched upon during all the pre-release hoopla and psycho analysis of this Disney film : the pride, self-respect and self-esteem of black boys.

When word of production of The Princess and the Frog first hit the masses via the press, the loudest original objections by black folks were about the original title which they felt was insulting (The Frog Princess),  the occupation of the lead character before she became a princess (at one time it was suggested she was a maid) and the type of complexion she may be given (there  was fatigue over the overuse of light skinned black women). What was not getting nearly as much negative press during those early days was that the prince was not going to be black but European instead.

Excuse me but let me pause to say it isn’t even worth pretending that there wouldn’t have been an uproar from the African American community if the plot had been a black male prince who fell in love with a European woman. And I’m being kind by putting it like that. Certainly the drumbeat of casting aspersions towards such a film would have been louder.  Under such a scenario I can imagine that respected black figures, who make a living commenting on the views of the black community, would have used every form of media to decry that this film was a slap in the face of black girls everywhere.  Samuels’ may have well been amongst them if not leading the charge herself.  Black and white intellectuals would take shots at Disney for reinforcing negative beliefs about black girls not being beautiful enough or worthy enough to be princesses. And any journalist who would write a piece about how such a movie should serve as a wonderful example of how black males could pick up non-black women would have been tar and feathered.

But, in the real universe we reside in, when it’s the black male that’s left out of the equation as it is in The Princess and the Frog, what  we get is mostly silence or passive acceptance. Yeah, its kinda a shame about the black boys , people seem to be saying,  but let’s move beyond that and go and out and support  a film with a black heroine anyway.

A black princess being front and center is indeed a cause for celebration and I don’t want to take anything away from that. I wonder however when a black prince will get his time in the sun (no, Will Smith saving Earth from aliens doesn’t count). I say this because this isn’t a first time thing with The Princess and the Frog. In 1997 Disney did another film with a black princess as lead. That time it was a made for TV retelling of “Cinderella” with African American Brandy Norwood as the title character. Whitney Houston played the Fairy Godmother and served as executive producer to boot. And in this film there was not a black prince to be seen either. There wasn’t even one black male who showed up on the screen. What did that say to black boys tuning in? Houston was quoted as commenting  she made the movie for her daughter, so I assume she didn’t think she was ever going to give birth to a son. By the way I would be remiss if I didn’t get another shot in by pointing out that according to Allison Samuels’ statistics, the rate of black women marrying outside their race did not get a bump despite the airing of this movie. Who knew?

Would it be too much to deduce that the feelings and sensitivities of black boys is not as much a priority to the black community as are those of girls? Perhaps. But there does appear to be more of a conscious attempt to deal with and work on how black girls perceive themselves. I liken it to how I recall a friend who worked in a toy store mentioning to me about black mothers who would buy any action figure, regardless of racial characteristics, for their sons but insist upon a black doll for their daughters. Often the argument goes that when it comes to their self image black females had to deal with all the centuries of white women being put on a pedestal in this country. Yet we are kidding ourselves if we don’t realize white males have been placed on a pedestal just as high and wide as the white women’s. Not to mention black men have historically been no more celebrated in America for their looks and desirability than black women have.

Certainly in the most popular forms of storytelling in America black men have never been presented as dashing, romantic princes. Wouldn’t it be collectively wonderful for black boys if they were? I have to admit the little boy deep inside of me would love to see something like that in an animated feature or any feature. Considering that in this current season during which the closest thing to a “love scene” that a black man has on the big screen is that of a brutal father raping his daughter in Precious, I suppose anything would be an improvement.  A movie with a black male as a prince would provide black boys with a much needed alternative role model that has nothing to do with rap music or sports. It would give black boys aspirations of not who they could date but who could they be. Unfortunately the message that is sent to black boys when they are not even considered as possibilities for princes, not even alongside black girls, is that they are not worthy or desirable enough. And even if such a film fate is some type of comeuppance that Allison Samuels thinks black men deserve for that “14 percent”, how can she justify young black boys, who have yet to dip their toes into the dating-game pool, getting the short end of the stick?

I don’t begrudge The Princess and the Frog and I’m not asking anyone to boycott it. My grudge is with Allison Samuels and her nonsense. I’m sure the movie will be a hit but if parents with black male children ask me if I think it’s something worthwhile for their boys to see I’m not sure what I’ll tell them. It doesn’t really matter.  According to Ms. Samuels it isn’t meant for them anyhow.