After watching the movie “Fakin’ da Funk,” I was able to identify five themes connected to race, ethnicity, and the stereotypes of “speaking black?. ” These five themes include racist stereotypes, racist misconceptions, ethnicity differentiation, and mistreatment because of race. The movie “Fakin da Funk” starts out with a black mother and father waiting to receive their young baby. The child finally comes but the only problem is the ethnical background of the child is different from that of the mother and father.
Despite this the mother doesn’t mind and says she wouldn’t mind keeping it while the father continues to argue with the man who brought the baby and says that they can’t keep the baby because it is not black and because there could be future problems with the Asian child growing up in “the hood?. ” Eventually they adopt Julian and he becomes their son. The first theme that became apparent to me as I watched the movie was the theme of racial misconceptions. As Julian was playing basketball one day in the park his black counterparts were playing ball and Julian wanted to play.
For the simple fact that Julian was Asian one of the young black males began to ridicule Julian and make Chinese jokes about him. I believe that being able to excel in basketball does not require one to be of a certain race or ethnicity. Also often times I see people having racial misconceptions about people because of how they act or where they originate from. For example a lot of people say that Asians are smart just because they are Asian. That is definitely not true because all humans are smart in their own way. The next theme that I was able to identify is the theme of racist stereotypes.
Julian was an Asian in a black family and a lot of people did not believe that he was being himself when he was apparently “speaking black?. ” There was a part of the movie where one of Julian’s friends told him to stop speaking black. To me speaking black is a racist stereotype towards black people because there is in fact no such thing as speaking black in my opinion. There are a lot of times where I see that blacks or others might tell one of their friends to stop acting black and it really upsets me because that person is being extremely ignorant in terms of how one must speak.
The next theme that was apparent to me in Fakin da funk is the theme of ethnicity differentiation. There was an Asian exchange student named May-ling who was also looking for her family members but she ended up staying with another African American family for a while. She was eventually treated differently because she didn’t speak good English. On a lot of occasions I see that people are teased and made fun of because they were immigrants and English wasn’t their first language. They have their accents with them and some of the accents might sound peculiar or strange causing others to laugh at them.
I believe that this is wrong because all people should be treated the same way regardless of ethnicity or accent. Lastly, a final and apparent theme that I noticed in fakin da funk is the theme of mistreatment because of race. The foreign exchange student May-ling was referred to as the the Asian girl and was the butt of some Asian jokes because of her race. I believe that this was unfair because your ethnicity does not define who you are as a person. I have many Asian friends and I refer to them as their names. They are all human beings and deserve to be treated equally like everyone else.
