“Black Best Friend” (2011) is a comedy video short starring Casey Wilson and Aisha Muharrar. It was written by Aisha Muharrar and directed by Emily Halpern. It plays on the Black Best Friend trope for laughs by showing how brainless it is. It makes you laugh and it makes you think.
It opens with Jen, a white woman played by Casey Wilson, having lunch with her new Black Best Friend, played by Aisha Muharrar. We never find out the Black Best Friend’s name, so I will use the names of the actresses instead.
Muharrar is going on and on about her break-up with her boyfriend.
Wilson is uninterested:
Look, when Emily introduced us I kind of thought I getting a black best friend. See, I kind of wanted this happy ending like in the movies where there is some black lady – or some African Ay-merican – who sweeps in and helps out her clueless white friend. I can’t have my black best friend be more clueless than me.
Muharrar has proved to be a disappointment. She is not like the black people in Hollywood films who:
- make you laugh, especially by the way they dance
- are super confident
- have no inner life
- talk in dialect
- come from some poor ghetto in the city
Instead Muharrar:
- gets lost
- cries
- speaks in Standard English
- talks about her inner life as if it mattered
- comes from middle-class, suburban Long Island (Wilson: “Long Island!!?? You kidding me with this shit!?”)
Muharrar cannot even act out the black stereotypes as well as Wilson does.
Wilson thinks all black people are the same, that Hollywood films present a faithful picture of what they are like.
As it turns out, a Black Best Friend is no friend at all. Friendship is supposed to be a two-way street, a more or less equal relationship. Friends care about each other and so on. All of that is missing from Wilson’s idea of a Black Best Friend: she does not care what Muharrar is going through. All she cares about is Muharrar hopefully sweeping in and helping her out in some sort of Magical Negro way so she can have her happy ending.
As bell hooks would put it, Muharrar has been reconfigured to the greater good of whiteness by Wilson.
It goes beyond mere self-centredness on Wilson’s part. While Muharrar is hardly Wilson’s slave or Mammy-style servant, Wilson still sees Muharrar according to the same broad pattern that goes back to slave days:
- as someone who is there to serve white people,
- as someone who is not fully human in her own right.
“Not fully human” might seem a bit exteme, yet it is Muharrar’s very failure to be a cardboard cut-out stereotype, it is her very humanness, that disappoints Wilson. And, in the end, it is Wilson’s unwillingness to see Muharrar as a person in her own right that ends the “friendship”.
See also:
Abagond 
Just saw this on YouTube. This short is truly art imitating life. I’ve seen it too many times.
LikeLike
This is on point. Sounds like the story of my life. Except, I know how to dance and can swing it in both worlds. It’s a double conciousness in the US society. WEB Dubois along with other AA erudites-definitely laid the ground work.
LikeLike
Lol! Reminds me of The Office episode when Michael expects that Stanley (an accountant) will be a “secret weapon” for their office basketball team because he’s a Black guy.
LikeLike
Really good. I like when she tries to say “girrrrl” at the end.
LikeLike
Seen it all, old news now
LikeLike
Excellent post. It shows that we live in a media and stereotype worshiping society. If it’s not in the media or part of some stereotype, most people won’t be interested.
LikeLike
… according to the same broad pattern that goes back to slave days:
* as someone who is there to serve white people,
* as someone who is not fully human in her own right.
-EXACTLY-
This is part of the reason why “The Help” is problematic for many BLACK PEOPLE and why ALL WHITE COMMUNITIES hurts everyone! (Clueless WP remain clueless while racism/white supremacy – in its various near invisible forms – marches on.)
LikeLike
I like the message but not the video itself.
LikeLike
I mean, the acting is (deliberately?) bad, and I get it’s not important, but it’s a bit distracting.
Also, please note that there is a difference between Best Black Friend and Black Best Friend.
Black Best Friend = Your best friend is black.
Best Black Friend = Black person you’re closest to.
It’s very important to understand the difference (because we all know said friend will be the only black person in the movie/show).
And yes, I’m being sarcastic.
Both tropes are used and abused in movies, TV shows, novels and other media.
And speaking of tropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackBestFriend
LikeLike
great stuff!
LikeLike
There is something weird going on in US. “My black best friend”??? 😀
@king: Thats great! I had almost similar incident back in the 80’s when we started talk about dangers etc. One white guy said to the only black guy there: I bet you get away cos you’re black. The black guy was into arts and poetry and truly non athletic guy but this white yankee assumed because he was The black guy, he would be fastest in running. Zeesus. 😀
LikeLike
Oh wow,
i am the “Black best friend” lol, and seeing this was hilarious and painful for 1 reason:
I swear, this is how like 90 percent of my conversations with the person in question go. It never fails. This site is like an intervention. Usually they’ll ask me something about “black people” they’re too scared to ask any other black person (because they think I’ll give them a pass to be offensive), but unless it’s that, they’ll completely act like I’m their electronic diary and won’t act like I have a life beyond sitting there.
LikeLike
Someone asked me to teach her how to dance for her wedding. OOPS wrong girl to ask haha.
LikeLike
Abagond:
Having friends and associates outside of your race is cool and all, but, let’s not make it more than what it really is. It’s not a social experiment.
Tyrone
LikeLike
I’m curious. What it really is?
LikeLike
Haha! That’s great!
There’s a subtlety that the writer (Muharrar) zoned onto well, and that’s that the black woman sits and tries to understand where the white woman is coming from. She’s not shocked, just trying to truly understand what the white woman is looking for. Really funny.
LikeLike
I have never seen it before, but so true. Lol!
Wasn’t Chris Rock supposed to make a movie based on the Esquire article about a white man who goes in search of a black friend?
LikeLike
In the TV show How I Met Your Mother, Lilly has a black friend whom she ‘ghetto” talks with. When Lilly leaves, the black friend talks normally, and is actually quite educated.
LikeLike
Brilliant.
Reminded me of this also – “My Black Friend” from AcceptableTV.
LikeLike
I was a best friend to this one Caucasian girl during the majority of my high school experience, and to this day she STILL expects me to be somewhat like the archetype above.
I’ve been around this chick for years: she’s seen me every day at school, she’s seen me at home, and I’ve visited her in her own home a few times—she basically knows how I truly am in my element and that, for the most part, my characteristics are pretty consistent… ie. I’m not a great dancer, I’m not outrageously funny (she has a stronger sense of humor than I do!), I can be extremely shy, and I confide in my friends about my problems. Although she wasn’t as obvious as the white woman in the video, she never really “understood” why I was the opposite of her expectations.
Again, I was friends with this girl for YEARS, and she just didn’t get it. She hated when I didn’t spend my time in class entertaining her. It was as if every waking moment of my life had to be devoted to getting a laugh out of her. Readers may think I’m exaggerating, but whenever I chose to actually pay attention in class and try to have an intellectual conversation with her, she would get so angry with me. The only time she wanted me to contribute anything intelligent was when she needed help with a lesson or homework or something. She always zoned out when I talked about anything other than her. She often called me “too opinionated” and “boring” because I was horrible at cracking jokes out of the blue for her. She always wanted me to introduce her to people for her and I felt forced to be more outgoing than I was to help her build social connections; she had a preference for black guys and asked me at twice a week if I knew any/had any family members that I could hook her up with. The thing that hurts the most is that throughout those 3 years of high school (I went to a different school my freshman year), she really learned nothing about me: she has no clue what my interests are or what I aspire to be…those are basic things one learns about his/her friend IMO. It never really came up. I can tell you what outfits she’d buy at the mall, what her favorite type of cookie is…etc.
I honestly did not want to admit that I was being used like this—I mean we had some fun times, at least when I conformed to what she wanted—but you wouldn’t believe how relieved I am that we’re headed off to different colleges, going our separate ways. It’s weird having a “best friend” that you’re secretly so frustrated with, having to try to convince someone to see you as more than just a benefit.
( oh, and side note: i love your blog lol. please check out mine when you have the chance, it’s still developing, but a lot of my posts are geared towards black female empowerment. http://www.tayexperience.wordpress.com )
LikeLike
I enjoyed this black best friend video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1jtD4PfKEU).
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Life in Anglo-America.
LikeLike
This is a great post, I found this by accident. I remember this video from a couple of years ago can’t remember where it was. But this is how some clueless whites regard black people, they tune us out when we discuss our grievances when we discuss racism and how it affects us in this country. They are happy when we are the mammys and magical negros that they imagine us to be. And they are disappointed and probably a little angry that we aren’t those stereotypical images and are the opposite of what they imagined a black person to be.
LikeLike
I am not sure about this premise. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. There was much racism then and I was exposed to much bigotry and slurs as well as pronounced biases of the day. I was taught to question, yet there we’re no satisfactory answers to explain the mindset I observed in the people I knew. My parents, out of fear, sent us to the predominately white high school. Indeed, there was a very few black students. I was curious, but not about to ask questions of them out of my very limited and biased information I gleaned from a troubled time in my youth. I never bought this racial divide, I saw actions, antipathy and dismissal of my fellow classmates, and a portion of our community for no discernable cause than skin tone. I still wonder at the skin tan phenomenon among so blind whites that denounce black as “less than” anyone else.
Now, quite before I reached adulthood, I recognized the chokehold white men placed on every difference from “them”. This includes gender. When anyone makes such broad characterizations and it becomes indoctrination by programming, I conclude the program director is the one with issues, they know not of which they speak.
I have been soulsick ever since I was aware of abuses heaped on all by a few. Yet, I couldn’t tell anything definitive from my observations…except I did get the idea I could never truly trust the facades people display in public, for I knew what depravities went on in private..I was designated object by actions and subordinate by gender…there are no other designated attriibutes that matter to this mindset that makes a white male special because of a genetic lottery. I still
Know we are all people. I do not think there has ever been any superior people.
I despise the conman and the ignorance of all that continues to divide the people by categorization. There are too many exceptions to the “rules” that belie the story we all hear.
For the record. My spirit is shared with all life, that is sacred itself. Life. So I suppose in some twisted minds, that makes me feel superior, I can assure you, we are all, in fact, equally clueless, but equally oppressed and suppressed until we can free the mind. Fear is the lever, fearless is the counter to it. I dont particularly care any more, the strife wears me out, as does the pettiness and hate that we keep alive with all the nonsense around it. This world is an illusion, that deludes people.
LikeLike
I just re watched this and it’s funny but it’s also annoying when white people are this clueless and stupid.
LikeLike