White Racist Caricatures: Too on the nose — unlike many real life racists (especially in the regions which The Great Migration led Black Americans to)

I’ve just started Them on Amazon Prime, and…. I’m not sure I’ll finish. It’s not necessary. The value of this show is currently being debated by some on Black Twitter, but I’ve determined where it is that I stand. As many of the reviews have said — we’ve seen this already. We’re living it. Why the Black torture and terror feature commemorating our suffering? 

Another great question that stirred within me and appeared in the reviews was: What’s up with these white antagonists who are very obviously racist? Especially in regions that attracted many Black Americans during the migration from the south. I live in the Northeast — I have for my entire life. The racism here is unlike any other that I’ve ever heard the south get credit for. It’s covert ops for sure and the undercut is often even more disturbing because it's hospitably performed. 

It’s very much like that tweet that discussed the difference between Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden being that one would use the N-word with a hard ‘r’ while the other would say it with the soft ‘a’ and a heart emoji. 

To better illustrate my point within context, here’s the following quote from critique Cassie da Costa at Vanity Fair:

“da Costa: Alison Pill’s character reminds me a lot of Jena Malone’s in another empty recent work about Black trauma, Antebellum. Both are white racist caricatures, groomed and grinning; stunningly evil, well-resourced, and ultimately eliminated. They each represent a kind of shorthand for white women’s complicity. This has the effect of watering down their behavior. Catherine Keener was much more effective in Get Out as the seemingly chill, New Age hypnotist mom aiding her tone-deaf surgeon husband with his horrific medically racist entrepreneurship. Those characters, even within the exaggerations typical to the horror genre, felt achingly real.”

Part of what made Catherine Keener from Get Out a more effective depiction of white racists was her amicable behavior that eventually elevated to hot-wired racist aggression. Keener better represents more implicit racism that is more commonly expressed (and comfortably) by enough of the white population for it to impact Black lives. Note the scene wherein one of the characters (the father, I believe) gleefully mentions how he would have “voted Obama in for a third term” if he could have. That’s definitely something you would hear a white liberal or democratic Pennsylvanian or Californian say — without a doubt — and they would swear on their life to protect any “Black bodies” with their “white one,” further feeding into a white supremacist values system. It’s those types of people who are much less obvious than the characters of Jena Malone and Alison Pill in this world, and need to be called out because they can cause just as much negative impact by upholding the very thing they say they want to dismantle, perhaps inadvertently in some cases. 

Angelica Jade Bastién, another critique of Them from Vulture, puts the rage of forms a racist might take on the spectrum of exhibited racism might take into perspective perfectly here, stating that Them “…has nothing new to say about whiteness — how it works, how it perpetuates itself, how ingrained it is in our culture. Yes, sometimes racists are venomous, other times they’re passive. Sometimes they burn the words “n - - - - - heaven” in your yard, other times they wear a smile as they rope you into a real-estate deal you’ll never escape from.” The author even goes as far as saying that one of the ways that whiteness and white supremacy are perpetuating themselves is through permeating the minds of Black creators with shows like this — creating trauma showcases for commercial hype. In private conversations, I’ve agreed that this show does not seem like one for Black people. Perhaps some of the more unaware youth (not at all to imply that this is a kids show, but just that it would take someone who really doesn’t understand racism or has never had any racist experiences resembling anything even remotely like this in order for this to be new news), but not for Black people who have been tuned in for the series of anti-Blackness and white “supremacy”.

Bastién goes on to argue and critique that “Them) doesn’t induce empathy or the desire for abolition in white folks. It doesn’t force others to consider the anti-Blackness they perpetuate. If anything, it lets modern white people off the hook, providing extremes with which they can distance themselves from their own racism. Little Marvin and Lena Waithe, like far too many Black creators in the industry, are not interested in challenging the status quo; they’re now a part of it. In doing so, they are cravenly using Black pain to line their pockets.”

The events of the past year alone with police brutality have resulted in a resurgence of history related to racism experienced by Black Americans, exposing a seemingly more distant pass (ex. notably in the 40s, 50s, and 60s) that has definitely laid the foundation for our present --  in the worst way. Author Bastién points to it herself, highlighting the recent  police killing of “20-year-old father Daunte Wright in Minnesota, watching Them feels like compounded trauma.”

Them, its depiction of obvious white villains, and the CONSISTENT criticism reverberating from these reviews reveal to me that we are perhaps going to start having a more in-depth deconstruction of how you don’t have to be a raging member of the KKK in order to qualify as a racist. It’s not always that obvious and white people who are congratulating themselves for expressing disdain for blatant racial violence definitely need to stop and check themselves because implicit biases and micro-aggressions are still major contributions to racism. Any day now. 

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For anyone still interested in learning about the real-life details of property ownership and active discrimination and deceit endured by Black people in United States history which still very much impacts the present in ways I will go on about in another post, I would recommend reading The Color of the Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.