This movie is racist towards black people
it completely demeans the african american ethnic group
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MovieChat Forums > Precious (2009) Discussion > This movie is racist towards black peopl...
I'm sorry... but i'm *beep* tired of certain black people accusing anything like this movie to be racist.
I am NOT racist. I am white, yes, but that doesn't mean that I have to be against all other races. Sure, there are people that are like that.
The problem is You. You see this and ALL you see is that the girl is black. The mother is black. The father is black. All I see is a story that happens daily for some people. And I am moved by that. The story.
There are so many movies that portray horrible stories, true stories, about white people. And I don't see it and think: "Oh no they didn't... I feel so angry about this, why a white person? Why not a black person?" It's really ridiculous. And i'm sick of it.
If I have to pay attention to every word I say when talking about another race, so nobody feels prejudiced, then they should learn that at some point they have to stop accusing everybody of being racist agaist them.
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I used to be a corrections officer. I would see women like Precious and her mother in the visiting room coming to see their incarcerated baby daddy/father/brother/son/cousin/boo/whatever all the time. These type of people exist. Deal with it.
shareOh for Pete's sake stop your whining. It just so happens that this story was written by a Black woman named Sapphire; for all we know she may have actually based the story on a person or persons she has known.
If you have issues with this film maybe you could take it up with the NAACP.
Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
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<"it completely demeans the african american ethnic group"
Really? Because it depicts an abusive mother and a rapist father? They could just as easily have been white. And I believe that Sapphire, who wrote the novel and is herself African American, based at least some of it on some people she had known.
And how does it "completely demean" the ethnic group? Outside of Precious's tragically dysfunctional family, the rest of the African-Americans in the cast are a mixed bunch; the teacher and her partner are hardly "demeaning," and neither are the male nurse or the mixed-race social worker. And Precious's classmates at the alternative school (the African-American ones of course) are not all cut from the same cloth; if they share one thing in common, it is that either they have not succeeded at school or, more accurately, the public school system has in some way failed them. But apart from that they are a VERY diverse group of young women, with varying personalities, individual voices, hopes, dreams, etc.
If you're going to make a blanket statement, it would be good sense to at least explain why you see things that way.
Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
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Why would so many African-American celebrities help produce this movie? It isn't exactly uplifting and although black Americans do have it hard in many states, I think this movie went overboard. It was based on a fictional book not reality. The screenplay was Oscar bait for rich white people in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts to feel a little better about themselves.
I'm all for movies about the downtrodden but this movie was intellectually dishonest.
The director is a dark skin black man who is homosexual and is in a relationship with a white man. The lesbian teacher is played by Paula Patton who is married to Robin Thicke a white R&B singer. This movie is a madhouse and is an abomination. All black skin Africans Americans married a Caucasian counterpart and although you will never fully be accepted in America your Oreo children surely will.
shareMost blacks will still say its racist if they had used white actors for the film.
shareEverytime I see a post that starts with "this movie is racist because..." I feel sick.
I cannot understand how someone would like to start such a pointless neverending debate:
- if there are [insert ethnic group], it's bad because they are portrayed badly
- if they are well portrayed though, it's bad as well because it is not
realistic and it does not show how tough it is to be [insert ethnic group]
- if there aren't [insert ethnic group], it's bad because they have been excluded
For God's sake! Movies show you a slice of reality, and in that particular slice it might be that the whites are bad, the blacks are worse, the latinos are good and the asians are stupid! it is just fiction portraying a SLICE of reality, you cannot take it as a comprehensive view of humanity !
Being racist means that you consider [insert ethnic group] inferior (anti-semitism), that's IT. Acting racist means that you use someone's [insert ethnic group] as a way to attack them (n*!). That's IT, I think it's pretty obvious.
Even if a movie shows either of those, and no one comes to mind atm, it can be merely portraying a past/current reality, it is showing racism but it is not racist!
Even if a movie tends to show [insert ethnic group] in a bad light because the script writer does not like [insert ethnic group], that's still ok, the audience should be discerning enough, shouldn't they? Disliking [insert ethnic group] does not mean that you are racist, everyone is entitled to his likes and dislikes, as long as he's respectful and understands that generalizing does not reflect 100% reality and must be taken with a pinch of salt. Hell, I know countless Brits who don't like Americans because they are loud and French because they are snooty! I know Spanish who don't like gipsies because they are sneaky and gipsies who don't like Spanish because they are full of themselves... And ALL of them still get along fine with the others! It is life, human nature...!!
I have decided not to read any more of these childish and whiny "this movie is raaaaaciiist" posts... it is a complete waste of time. I hope some of you join me, otherwise these attention w*ores will keep on plaguing these boards.
Le beau est bizarre
I think there are times to have this complaint and times to realize that the complaint isn't valid.
In this case, I don't think the complaint about this movie being racist is valid.
The idea is that it's a poor, overweight, illiterate, black girl with a baby, a horrible, abusive mother and an absent father. "That's why it's racist!!" The concept of the story was to illustrate a tragic yet realistic view from someone on that side. It was done in seriousness and it wasn't done so badly.
The truth is, generally speaking in inner cities, the black family is destroyed. Government depended, absent father, young mothers, kids drop out of school, enter into the criminal system, welfare-cycle.
The point is this movie involves race, depicts races blatantly, but I wouldn't call that racism. LBJ's "Great Society" is racist. Thinking black people can only get ahead via Affirmative Action is racist. Illustrating someone stuck in a cycle of poverty and working hard to get out despite all odds being against her isn't racist.
I completely agree with you. Precious is a very positive role model. She has endure such extreme level of abuse, yet she is struggling to discover what normal life truly is (because she has yet to experience it with her own family), be a good mother and overcome her countless obstacles and limited predicted life span.
shareSo a story written by a black woman, adapted to the screen by a black man and directed by another black man is racist against black people.
Slow hand clap.
This movie is racist? It is starred by people of African American descent, directed by a black actor and produced by blacks?
If they used Kim Basinger as Mary and let´s say a Skinny white girl as PRECIOUS then it would be racist at least to the PC people.
Very well said, Ingeniero.
- You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You Is Important...
Firstly, this movie was not in even the slightest way racist. It doesn't matter if the director or an actor is married to a white person. It would be equally racist to say that a "racist free" movie depicting blacks be made and produced by nothing but black people from legacy black families. I applaud interracial couples- because it shouldn't be a requirement to stick to your own race. I find a lot of the "This movie is racist" comments to be deeply racist themselves.
At no time did I sit here watching this movie thinking "Look at that black girl" or "those black people." I sat there horrified and moved and thinking to myself, my god the sh*t some people have to go through in life, and my God, what she has overcome. I'm latin american and am married to a scottish man. I grew up in a very poor family that lived on the system for years. I met a lot of people in the same circumstances who were as white as the driven snow, on drugs, on the system and many dealing with the aftermath of disease and sexual abuse. If all you saw in this movie were a bunch of trashy black people, that's on you.
Because what I saw were a bunch of people (their race couldn't matter less to me) living in impossibly difficult (but entirely realistic) circumstances, that I myself have witnessed firsthand. If they'd adapted the book into a movie using a white cast, you'd have the same argument, so I have to wonder why there are so many racist people out there pointing fingers when they really ought to look inward.
Kд§$ị (ИσvΔ)
Kassi Nova I could not have said it better.
Some hurt, some love, some shout. I fought the world and I lost that bout. ~ Blue October
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no matter what movie people watch, whether there's one black, two black guys, no black guys or no white guys, there's gonna be dumba**es complaining about racism.
This movie doesn't "portray" anything. It just tells you the story of an obese and abused girl's life living in a poor neighborhood. You don't think some people's lives are like that? or that any of them could be black? And yes, white girls do have this life as well. But whether the main character was black or white, we'd still be discussing the same topic.
In any case, the writers don't need you telling them what's stereotypical or racist, because they know it better than you do.