Once nonblack people were thrown into the mix, there was room for comparison. From there she moves on to the next level of competition, where she competes with wealthier kids from other parts of Southern California.Īt this point in the story, I got worried. After catching her teacher's eye with her performance on spelling tests, she's encouraged to enter the school spelling bee and, predictably, wins. The bathroom stalls don't have doors and the curriculum is boring. "Akeelah and the Bee" kept all those things in mind.Īkeelah (KeKe Palmer) is an 11-year-old in South (formerly South Central) Los Angeles with an incredible memory and vocabulary, but she is stuck in an underfunded school. It seems that instead of chastising those kids and saying they're averse to education, it makes more sense to consider that, when some kids look at their schools, it's no wonder education seems so averse to them. They found that most black children who purposely underachieved in school did so out of fear of being called things like "egghead" or "brainiac," not because they were afraid of being called "white," "sellout" or "Oreo." Those students who claimed the burden of "acting white" did so in environments where honors and advanced-placement classes had very few black students. Sandy Darity, my mentor in graduate school at North Carolina, did a study with sociologist Karolyn Tyson and psychologist Domini Castellino that found the "acting white" hypothesis to be mostly nonsensical. I haven't checked the Ebonics dictionary lately, but I don't think "dweeb," "dork" and "geek" are words black folks came up with. The problem with the theory is that being the smart kid in grade school isn't cool anywhere. And it fired a damaging blow at those who would have you believe that black folks possess a dysfunctional, violent allergy to education.Ī few academic theories have trumpeted the "acting white" hypothesis, the notion that black children underachieve in school because they are afraid to be deemed race traitors. "Akeelah and the Bee" does what so few films do - it shows an appreciation for the humanity of black folks, a group rarely treated respectfully on screen. Instead of seeing a movie I expected to hate, I saw a movie I've always wanted to see. To say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement. Fishburne not only starred but also was a co-producer. Plus, I figured it would be worth the six bucks to see Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne on screen together sans fisticuffs or the violent use of cake. I competed in a few bees during my childhood, so I figured there would be some nostalgic value. The movie was produced by Lions Gate Films, an independent company best known for two movies, "Monster's Ball" and "Crash." Halle Berry won Best Actress for her performance in "Monster's Ball," joining Hattie McDaniel's Mammy ("Gone With the Wind") and Whoopi Goldberg's Oda Mae Brown ("Ghost") in Oscar's disturbing roll call of black female winners.Īs for "Crash," Scott Foundas of the LA Weekly hit the nail on the head when he wrote the following about the film: "Welcome to the best movie of the year for people who like to say 'a lot of my best friends are black.'" So forgive me for expecting little from Lions Gate.īut I went to see "Akeelah and the Bee" anyway.
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