Quvenzhané Wallis, Matthew McConaughey, and How We See Our Children of Color | The Jose Vilson

Quvenzhané Wallis, Matthew McConaughey, and How We See Our Children of Color | The Jose Vilson:

Quvenzhané Wallis, Matthew McConaughey, and How We See Our Children of Color

by Jose Vilson

Quvenzhané Wallis on the cover of Entertainment Magazine

I have a confession: I’ve never seen Beasts of the Southern Wild. As a relatively new parent, I don’t always have the time or the funds to make it out to the movies very often.
But that’s not the purpose for my essay because, when it comes out on Netflix, I know I have to watch. I, along with thousands of others, took issue with the Onion’s satirical tweet calling Quvenzhané a cunt. I “got” it. She’s such a sweet, little, innocent girl that the joke was made as a reflection of the speaker and not of Quvenzhané herself. In the context of the lukewarm Seth Farlene jokes at the Oscars and Django Unchained, this might have seemed innocuous to some.
It wasn’t. I found it disgusting.
In fact, I found it both sexist and racist, but for the purposes of this essay, I’ll speak to the race piece, especially