TONYA JAMESON | Opinion 'White Chicks' film expands stereotypes

White people -- rise up.
I can't believe that, more than a month after the Wayanses released "White Chicks," the only public criticism has come from a white country singer who was defending a comedian in blackface.
In the film, Marlon and Shawn Wayans play bumbling FBI agents who basically don whiteface to impersonate two rich white sisters. The movie parodies Hampton socialites, but it also perpetuates stereotypes that apply to whites of any economic level: whites can't dance, they're nonconfrontational, and the women are clueless and easy.
Same jokes
Blacks still face cultural stereotypes in entertainment, but picking on whites is annoyingly pervasive in entertainment geared toward blacks. Too many young black comedians rely on the same stale white people jokes. Many black-oriented sitcoms, such as "The Parkers," have token stereotypical white people. But few whites speak out.
OK, one. But if Ray Price is the voice of the concerned, then white people are in trouble. The 78-year-old country singer came under fire after a comedian in blackface opened his Louisiana show in July -- that's July 2004, not July 1940. Criticism from the Lafayette chapter of the NAACP prompted Price to complain about the double standard regarding the Wayans' film.
At least blacks had someone to challenge Price. Whites don't have a group such as the NAACP watching the media and speaking out against how whites are portrayed in entertainment. About the only groups speaking up for whites are white supremacists -- and their credibility is, well, you know, zero.
Culture
I was recently an adviser at a summer camp for high school students. One exercise involved the high schoolers dividing into their ethnic groups. The goal was for them to define their culture, identify what makes them proud and create a performance that illustrates pride in their ethnicity.
As it happens each year, the Caucasian group had a difficult time defining their culture and finding things to be proud of.
"White Chicks" gives these students one less reason to be proud.
An NAACP for whites could speak out against "White Chicks" and provide an alternative voice to the movie critics who praised the film.
The 1986 movie "Soul Man" came under some criticism from the NAACP. It starred C. Thomas Howell as a white student who posed as a black man to win a minority scholarship to Harvard.
The NAACP's national office sent letters advising its chapters to ask members not to support the film. Benjamin Hooks, NAACP president at the time, publicly criticized the movie.
It doesn't even take something as egregious as a white person wearing blackface to anger blacks. In the last year, journalists criticized white reporters at two newspapers who wrote stories in hip-hop vernacular. The game Ghettopoly was pulled from youth-oriented retailer Urban Outfitters because some black clergymen and the NAACP complained it stereotyped blacks.
Yet "White Chicks" can degrade whites and rake in nearly $50 million.
Humor doesn't help
I'll admit the movie has some funny scenes. The "You Got Served"-style dance-off at a night club and the big black guy singing Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" cracked me up.
Those moments, however, don't excuse the movie's obvious stereotypes and the more underlying notion that two black men can somehow teach white females how to be better women. In the movie, the Wayans brothers pose as the Wilson sisters and teach real white socialites how to stand up for themselves against other snobby rich girls and how to dump an undeserving boyfriend.
Negative portrayals of whites in entertainment isn't as detrimental as the consistent degradation of blacks in the media. I doubt a white man lost a job at Bank of America because he couldn't dance. But the silence from whites regarding television shows, movies, comedians and music that belittle white culture sends a subversive message to Caucasian kids that they shouldn't speak up when their ethnicity is being insulted.
I want white children to take as much pride in their culture as I take in mine.
XJameson writes for Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).