Lakeview Terrace : When the Definition of Racism is Racist
by Special Correspondent Thea Lim
Can you judge a movie by its trailer?
Opening this Friday, this is Lakeview Terrace’s premise according to the LA Times: “Jackson plays a law-and-order racist who doesn’t like the interracial couple next door.”
The racial relationships appear to be secondary to the film’s central, upper case question: What do you do when you can’t call the police??? (Gasp! Can you imagine such a topsy turvy universe? Oh, right.)
But I couldn’t help but chafe at the way the Lakeview Terrace trailer presents racism and interracial relationships. What kind of harassment do interracial couples face today? While a few years ago interracial relationships were met with hostility and violence – and still are – today there’s also the possibility that you’ll get a whole other type of gross response. Like maybe a high five (Way to bag a Asian/Latina/Black chick!) or cooing (Do you think you’ll have little chocolate babies?).
This is the mind-blowing contortion of contemporary racism: racism no longer simply outlaws interracial relationships, it also encourages them.
This is because racism these days often takes an inclusive form. Living in an urban, liberal city, the kind of racism I see most often takes the form of cultural appropriation: going to a restaurant and seeing our cultural foods co-opted into some sort of mayonnaise hybrid; hearing non-Black hipsters calling each other N***** to show how “down” they are; attending a yoga class and seeing statues of sacred deities being used as coat racks; and of course, the exoticisation of women of colour, and the asexualisation (sorry, making up words) of many men of colour. See Esther Ku – or Samurai Girl! – if you want proof.
As a culture we seem to define racism solely as an act that involves burning crosses or violence. Sometimes it seems like mainstream North American culture will only agree it’s racism when physical suffering is involved – and even then it can be a tough sell. But I see that there are two kinds of racism: hostile racism, and benevolent racism. The first kind involves burning crosses, the second kind involves people wanting to befriend you because they think you can teach them kung fu. If we privilege one kind of racism over an other, we are less equipped to spot, call out, name, validate our experience of, and stamp out the other kind.
But the way Lakeview Terrace highlights hostile racism isn’t it’s only problem. At least from the trailer, the movie seems allergic to the idea that benevolent racism exists.
From that LA Times article:
Turner [played by Samuel L. Jackson], a single father of two, also can’t stand that the skin color of his neighbors isn’t the same. “You can listen to that noise all night long,” Turner at one point says to Chris as he listens to rap music, “but when you wake up in the morning, you’ll still be white.”
In my world, it’s not so unusual for people to have genuine beef with white folks who listen to rap music – when it’s perceived that they’re doing so just so that they can seem like they have “cred.” I don’t think POCs or anti-racist folks should hate on any white person who likes rap. However, there’s a justifiable context to that unjustifiable bias: white folks have been hijacking elements of black culture for their own use since white and black folks began to co-exist in America. But this statement, which in another setting could be form some sort of anti-racist protest, is a threat in the movie, is irrational – as in how dare those uppity black people say we can’t listen to their music – rather than a real issue that anti-racist people tussle with.
[The article also mentions that Turner hates hybrid cars, because that's right, the only people in America who are racist are crazed right-wingers who have an irrational hatred of espresso-based coffee and pilates. Just so you have a nice little dose of liberal dogmatism to go with your racism.]
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