ing, many white people assume this is the way black people conceptualize whiteness. They do not imagine that the way whiteness makes its presence felt in black life, most often as terrorizing imposition, a power that wounds, hurts, tortures, is a reality that disrupts the fantasy of whiteness as representing goodness (Hooks 340-341).
Hooks notes how both black and white today believe that racism has been eliminated, a myth they accept in part because it is convenient to do so: "It allows for assimilation and forgetfulness" (Hooks 345).
The film Soul Man (Steve Miner, 1986) is a white-made film with few redeeming qualities. It also involves an inversion, though one that borders on the insulting as the white central character passes for black in college in order to get a minority scholarship. The filmmakers use numerous stereotypes of blacks, and especially of blacks and the issue of affirmative action, for laughs. What passes for social commentary in the film derives from the way the student is treated--since he is black, the filmm
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