Thoughts about "A Girl Like Me"

I enjoyed watching the movie "A girl like me". I thought it was so interesting and I guess I was kind of ignorant as to what African-American girls go through when growing up. As a Hispanic, I found some similarities between the two races.

I started thinking about how in hispanic communities we often stereotype hispanics by the way we talk or where we are from. There are chicanos, Mexicans, latinos and mix. There are stereotypes within the Hispanic community from the lighter hispanics to the darker, etc.

I thought the study the author of the video did with the dolls was shocking. It's incredible that nothing has changed within our society.

African-American Women

I was very shocked to read that African-American women are so much more likely to get diabetes and die from breast cancer. I wasn't aware of it and found it very much surprising.

I also watched the video on ABC's website about interracial couples and how they are growing. I found it interesting that the number is increasing. The video mentioned how women are meeting men in the workplace and that often African-American men are not at the same professional levels they are. This can be foreshadowed by the number of African-American men in school which is less than that of women.

I don't think that interracial marriage is a problem, it's just interesting to see how things are changing.

Asian Stereotypes

After reading the ABC article about Bruce Lee, I started thinking about Hollywood movies with Asian actors and realized there really aren't any popular movies where Asian characters aren't portrayed as something other than fighters.

I asked my husband to randomly name movies with Asian actors/actresses. Here is what he came up with:

• Romeo must die
• Charlies Angels
• Rush Hour
• Enter the dragon
• Live free or die Hard
• The Last Samurai

In all these movies, the characters portrayed know martial arts. I then asked him if he could name a movie where the Asian character didn't know martial arts. The only one he could come up with, after a few minutes was "Memoirs of a Geisha".