Half Caste: Free To Be Me 4 3
just this troublesome extra layer of ‘differentness’ that
provokes such strong negative reactions in some
people? Or is there something more fundamental
about what mixed race people represent? Something
that taps into prejudices and fears so deep-seated that
they go beyond mere ‘race’?
What is this media obsession
with Linford Christie’s
‘lunchbox’?
The most commonly voiced belief amongst those,
white or black, who object to mixed race relationships,
is that ‘interbreeding’ compromises the integrity of the
race. In the mixing of bloods, culture is undermined,
its very existence threatened. Yet, in these claims, one
can detect a subtle intermingling of racial stereotypes
and sexual neuroses which have their roots in the
phenomenon that represents the over-arching context
for black-white relations: slavery.
However, and despite the fact that she had never made
any secret of her dual-heritage, she soon found herself
‘outed’ by a press who suddenly decided that (in the
words of the Evening Standard), Halle “isn’t exactly
black”. The implication of many observers seemed to
be that Berry was cashing in on her blackness, using
the label to score points. After years of struggling to
make herself known, in part due to her colour,
suddenly she wasn’t black enough. Yet, to have made
more of her white heritage during her career would no
doubt have been interpreted as denial and self-hatred.
The world wants us to be either one or ‘the other’.Is it
In the September 2003 edition of Drum, Shirley Brooks
wrote with wit and insight about the ‘Mandingo
Complex’: the myth, rooted in the Atlantic slave trade,
and enthusiastically taken up by Western society, that
black men are, by their nature, sexually potent,
powerful, and insatiable. This image is a staple of the
white-dominated porn industry, but it’s pervasiveness
and widespread acceptability can be seen in the
media’s bizarre obsession with Linford Christie’s
‘lunchbox’, at the time when he was arguably the
country’s greatest, most successful sportsman. Sure he
won the most coveted prize in world sport, but what
about his cock?!
As Ricky Gervais brilliantly illustrated in a particular
episode of The Office (“Is it bigger than a breadbin?”),
the white male’s hilarity at the prospect of the
fictional, super-sexualised black man reflects both
contempt and fear. By reducing him to a phallus with
a body on the end, he can reassure himself of his
intellectual superiority. And by laughing about it, he
can ignore the nagging fear that one day a black »