Idris Elba: Black Men Not Considered “Sexy” By America

Fair enough points I suppose Pixie, I do feel some white women being in the dominant culture in America are concerned with perceptions of friends, family, etc and how they will view them.

Some don't but there are many who do take note of these things and it impacts their choices, this is all presupposing they have an interest in black men in the first place.

 

LOL, absolutely, you know how many white men I have heard crying about white women in regards to relationships.

All you can do is live and let live. Forget all the haters and negative bullshit.

I will never, ever let that affect my personal decisions in life. I'm too confident and secure in myself to ever do that.

 

Especially with younger women, you are quite probably on target. It takes people awhile to grow up and shed that "what will mom & dad* think" idea in some cases.

Sometimes I forget I had a somewhat unusual childhood.

 

Oh hell there's an entire area of feminist giggling that has to do with "Nice Guys" who think they deserve a cookie for not being utterly obvious assholes. They're assholes, they just hide it better. They're often the younger group who grow up to become MRAs.

If I had a dollar for every white guy I've nicely turned down over the years, I'd be living in a lovely stone cottage in Wales, with hot and cold running cabana boys to attend to my every need. ;-)

 

Personally I never got the whole sense of being in a gender war with women.

Maybe its because I deal with others how I want to be dealt with. That simple.

Some of those dudes take this shit literal and have a profound disdain for women outside of wanting to fuck them and nothing else, or it certainly seems that way at times.

Like I said maybe its just my personality in interacting with others.

I don't know if those type of dudes pick these things up from a very young age or what is at work that shapes there thinking.

Saying things to women like go in the kitchen and make me a sandwich. W.T.F.

Just like I don't subscribe to the notion that any woman is goddess of the Earth and all that outlandish yak, I don't subscribe to the idea of women are these miserable wenches that should be hung, drawn and quartered. All I see is shitty men and shitty women who can't get along.

 

Spot on. Those kind of guys you describe? It always seems to me that they don't *like* women. They just like sex, and the woman is the inconvenient "thing" attached to the body parts they want to fondle. That right there explains why they can't get laid.

Women are people. If you deal with us *as* people we're much more likely to enjoy your company.

 

This is where you lost me.

 

Such a hard concept, I know. It's almost like we're...HUMANS!

 

Keep telling yourself that toots lol

 

Oh honeybunch, even those bitches, ho's and pussy's you date are human...they just happen to be named after animals and gardening tools, that's all...

 

They don't carry themselves like that. They want to be treated like that but don't act like that. Like I said when someone wants just me and not what I can potentially provide that's a keeper

 

Maybe he means middle-America. A lot consider the States to consist of The East-Coast & West-Coast. The middle is usuually the predominately white. Also, lets not forget the South.

 

Aren't you like 54?

 

Yes, I am going to be 53 next month. And? My pic is posted. You can see for yourself whether I'd have trouble attracting men of any persuasion.

 

Ha

the compliments are going straight to her head

 

No, I'm old, I'm just not stupid or quite hopeless looking.

Wise ass ;-)

 

How's that for modesty



honestly tho..where I work I've seen older women in their late 40s and 50s, that still have a sexiness about them, because they watch what they eat, don't smoke, exercise, don't tan like crazy, etc

 

I haven't tanned since I was 22. With all the burning and peeling that has to go on it just isn't worth it. I'm too fair skinned.

 

Been lurking for a while but this is definitely a post I need to respond to.

There's a tendency as an actor or writer or director to internalize what work you're given (and what work you are not), so I sympathize with Elba but he's got it all wrong.

Elba, OP, it's not that black men aren't considered sexy, it's that black men aren't held up/depicted/celebrated as sexy, at not least intentionally (more on that later).

There's a difference between peoples' private feelings or beliefs and the world of images and representation where money and ticket sales are directly related to depicting things that are easy to stomach, but not always true.

I'd be like if I said, flippantly, black people are inferior to white people. Everyone would be up in arms and rightly so.

It's that for most of this nation's history, white people have been celebrated/held up/depicted as superior to black people. That's not reality. That's social construction.

What's interesting about Hollywood or the media in general is that even though the Elbas, the Diggses, and maybe even the Denzels have seldom seen befitting character descriptions, in spite of it all they're still considered sexy. Imagine how things would be if they were equal?!

Moreover, moving towards music and sports, those same characters (street-smart, funny, hypermasculine etc etc) have come back to bite them in the behind. LL Cool J, Lebron, Wade, Kobe, Kanye...the list goes on and on. They're all considered sexy men.

Oppression is a complicated force that comes from a lot of different directions, such that many of the things that are supposed to cut us down actually make us more attractive.

Finally, I'm reminded of when black people weren't allowed to read as slaves while at the same time were "considered" subhuman or not even human. That's probably the biggest contradiction ever.

If you're not human, you can't read so why be concerned? Why go out of your way to keep your slaves illiterate?

It's because deep down, even back then, racists knew that black people were equal.

The same thing is at work here.

 

Aiight I’m not saying that I agree with brother Idris, but I kinda know where he’s coming from. I’ve seen some trailers and a few scenes from his series on BBC titled "Luther" and I was very impressed with what I saw.

Having said that, I do believe that if "Luther" were to have premiered on U.S. soil on any of the four major networks it more than likely would’ve been canceled after 6 weeks or so.

My $0.02