Image via Complex Original
From film to news and everything in between, there’s no denying that the media we consume is overwhelmingly white and male. Even when minorities aren’t being overlooked in lieu of mediocre white acts (ahem, Macklemore)—as we’ve seen with #OscarsSoWhite—creators of color are frequently dismissed or called racists when they do challenge their exclusion and erasure in mainstream culture.
The folks behind "All Black Everything No White Anything," who originally started their blog as a joke in January, are hoping to challenge this problem. Their goal? To only consume works produced by and featuring people of color for an entire year. Whether it’s listening to Chescaleigh's latest rant or watching films for their “Friday Movie Roundup,” Ariel Roland-Waring, Brittany Levers, and Nico Montano are committed to “de-centering whiteness” to better understand how they see themselves and the world.
NTRSCTN interviewed the trio to see how they plan on completing this ambitious challenge.
NTRSCTN: What was the inspiration behind "All Black Everything No White Anything"?
Montano: Ariel and I were jokingly like, “Imagine if we didn’t watch or read anything by white people or with white people for a while?” ... It was a set of conversations, realizations, and continually saying, “Why not?” There’s also a political aspect to it with #BlackLivesMatter. While we focus on people of color in general, we ask what blackness means in the U.S. ...We thought this would be an intense exploration of how we’d navigate the world and how our world would look.
Why did you decide to tackle mainstream media's "whiteness" problem this way?
Roland-Waring: Whiteness is a very visual thing, down to who is in our movies, TV shows, and books. When books turn into movies, they usually turn into white characters. ...These images are used as a tool to perpetuate whiteness.
Describe how you want to see people of color represented. What narratives would you like to change?
Roland-Waring: All expressions of blackness are beautiful, but everyone won’t know that until we see broader expressions of said blackness. ...Rom-coms are usually very cisgendered, heterosexual, and misogynist, and I’d like to see more queer black women. I hate to mention Tyler Perry, but it frustrates me when light-skinned, working-class people are fetishized. …To be single is the devil, to be alone is terrible; you need to seek out a religious force to get your life right, and you will keep your man if you just go to church and keep your legs closed—that’s not for everyone. …I'd like to see the black version of Girls. Why can't we be carefree and single in our Brooklyn apartments, too?
Levers: I want to see more artists expand their work to cover more cultural contexts across every border.
Montano: Latin narratives are very racialized. Film funding usually comes from Argentina, Chile, or Mexico—all the light skin and all the blonde hair. ...It’d be cool to see the specific things I do from my cultural upbringing, really basic stuff that's not complicated. ...We also want to be basic and boring sometimes.
Explain why being pro-black and pro-POC is not anti-white. How do you respond to people who don’t get it?
Roland-Waring: History is the short-cut answer. For an oppressed people to turn around and say, “I love myself anyway” is not to say that my oppressor is crap; it’s trying to uplift myself out of this situation. We face so many systems of oppression on the daily that an element of this is self-care, and I don’t see how self-care is in any way antagonistic or anti-anyone.
There’s a misconception of what the word "love" is. You don’t love yourself in relation to hating somebody else. You just love yourself, period. I think the notion of pro-black meaning anti-white comes from this belief in “reverse racism,” which is not a thing.
Montano: Oftentimes in cinema, there are only representations of us that are so-called ugly, bad, or antagonistic in contrast to whiteness. We’re trying to make those things beautiful, good, and more relatable. ...So often, it doesn't have to do with whiteness.
Levers: White people are so used to being everything, so when it's not for them, it's against them. ...Maintaining a state of oppression attempts to prevent any solidarity. ...When we're conditioned to hate our melanin, it becomes revolutionary to love ourselves.
How has this personal project affected your professional lives, if at all?
Roland-Waring: When looking for resources to add to lessons in my astronomy-themed art class, it was frustrating that there isn't this mainstream community of POC astronomers I can use to teach my kids. The only person out there was Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and he’s not talking about elementary school science. ...Even though my kids can see there's someone out there that looks like them, he's the only one in the spotlight, and they see him as the exception.
Levers: As a residential counselor, this project doesn’t infringe on my professional life. But my mostly white coworkers are actually really intrigued by the project, and are reading the blog. Every morning, our conversation will start with something related to race.
Montano: I work in a criminal-justice setting, and I’m very aware that the conversations are typically controlled by white people—from reports and panels to conferences and policymakers. ...I look at Making a Murderer or Criminal Minds, where these shows are centered on white voices, actors, and white stories. ...We’ve had people say ["All Black Everything No White Anything"] is fine-lined racism. A mentor told me to disengage and be careful because it could be seen as very radical and might be misread, especially with the name. But I’m even more interested now because I’m thinking, “What the hell is radical?” Can I only engage on social media with cat videos?
What are your thoughts on #OscarsSoWhite?
Montano: Of course this happened. It’s a chronic problem in the Academy. …But whether we like it or not, the Oscars has so much influence and economic power on a global scale. These films become solidified as classics—the things we should watch. So there’s a problem when the only people getting awards are white.
Will you be watching?
Roland-Waring and Levers: Not really.
How is technology an important tool for people of color today?
Roland-Waring: People have their critiques of social media activism, but I think it’s ableist. What if people aren’t mobile, or parents who are caregivers can’t go to a march because they're afraid of getting arrested? …[Technology] gives people access, so there are all these things that having an online presence gets around.
Levers: Technology provides a voice for those who are not able to speak or are geographically isolated from communities they can relate to. ...It’s a means of escape and an outlet to cope with what we’re experiencing, which can be very therapeutic.
Montano: I get frustrated when people from the Civil Rights era say we need to mobilize and get outside—we got bills and loans to pay back. ...The fact that we can have a blog and make it interactive couldn’t happen years ago. We would’ve been limited to writing in a local newspaper or in some smaller capacity. ...YouTube is a great platform, and though it’s not always safe from racism, it has given us tools to fight back.
What do you anticipate will happen by this project's conclusion?
Roland-Waring: I imagine this becoming a great sharing space. ...At the end of the year, I’d like to have a conversation in a predominately white space and not relate to anything being said, and bring up all these great POC texts, and tell [white people] to get on it.
Montano: I’m thinking of this as a research project. With the "Friday Movie Roundups" we’re collecting data about what’s accessible. ...When people say there’s diversity out there, it isn’t just a black man, and those are often narrow stories about masculinity anyway. When someone asks me if I read that article in The Atlantic, I want to be like, “No. But did you read Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldúa? No? Why not?” We're hyped and are okay with not knowing what's happening in Game of Thrones. We also want white people to read this, but do it on your own time and don’t think you’ll get a cookie for it.
...People have said we’ll be in an echo chamber only reading and watching people of color, but that assumption is so racist—that all people of color have the same opinion. This is part of the point. We have a large range of opinions, ideologies, and philosophies. We’re not going to be in an echo chamber. We’re going to be okay.
Levers: I hope people are inspired to read, and watch more works by people of color, and refrain from staying in that same white, conformable space they’re used to.
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
