Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Let her be a kid!


Have you heard about Miley Cyrus' newest scandal? It seems that she is now racist for pretending to be asian. Now, I have almost no respect for Miley as a singer, and none for her as an actress. However, as a fellow teenage girl, I feel I must stick by her side on this one.
I have a friend who does an "angry southern black woman" impersonation. You know how a southern black woman sounds when she gets angry. This is not racial profiling, it's simply the truth. Everyone knows that when she starts shouting, "Get yo lazy butt in dis house raight naow!" Ya bette stop whadeva it is ya'll ah doin, an' get in dat house!
I have another friend who pretends to be a "sassy lil white girl".
This is just a portion of it, but it's one of the funniest things ever.
We don't just pick on whites and blacks though. With my group of friends, there is an equal share of fat jokes, tall jokes, mexican jokes, asian jokes, and pleanty of jokes about the Irish. And shortness. (I don't have that much of a temper! And just because I'm short does not make me a leprechaun!)
We don't make these jokes to be mean, or racist. We do it because it's funny, and because we're able to laugh about ourselves. We aren't targeting one specific group, in fact, we make fun of ourselves more than anything.
Why is it Miley is being picked on for this? Yeah, she's a role model for young kids. Yeah, she should watch what she does in front of those kids. Should she have stop being a kid herself for these same reasons? I don't think so. What's your opinion on the matter?

1 comment:

  1. Obviously, what she was doing was all just in fun. It was meant to be funny, not mean, and so her doing this doesn't automatically make her racist. It bothers me when people get so overly sensitive and start accusing people over the smallest of things.

    Not too long ago my three-year-old brother saw a picture of a group of Asian people as asked me, "Why are they all blind?" I laughed and explained to him that they weren't. It was a totally innocent question, but even now, whenever he pretends to be blind, instead of shutting his eyes he pulls them back with his fingers until he can't see! It's funny - and though we always explain to him the truth about blindness we still laugh.

    All over the world people are different, and people do need to accept those differences, but we don't have to pretend they're not there. As long as everyone thinks it's funny, and no one's feelings are getting hurt, I think jokes like these are fine. I agree - let her be a kid!

    ReplyDelete