Erin Haynes

It's a Hard-Knock (Black) Life

The lights in the room darkened and the Hollywood classic, “It’s A Hard-Knock Life” began to fill the silence, and a young girl named Annie appeared on the screen. With her curly hair and little red dress, Jamie Foxx’s remake of the Hollywood classic, Annie, hit the big screen again, but the new twist was that the actress playing the orphan was black. This field-trip made me excited to see a major blockbuster featuring an actress I can relate to. As the opening scene began to roll, I became absorbed into Annie’s fictional world, but my trance suddenly broke when a classmate named Amelia uttered, “I’m not trying to be racist or anything but why do black people steal everything?” The blood drained from my face as I craned my head to stare at her porcelain skin, but was unable to say anything as she giggled at herself in approval of her own words. While the film continued to play on screen, my mind unlatched its own reel and memories from history class began to project in my thoughts. Suddenly, chains, diseases, and colonialism of the transatlantic slave trade began to flash in my mind, and the images quickly morphed into blackface, police brutality, and the death of Tupac Shakur.