" How to Date a Browngirl, Whitegirl or Halfie"

Outline

Introduction

Discussion

Conclusion

Works cited

Introduction

Junot Diaz's “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” seems to play into and highlight the racial stereotypes that affect the way Americans see each other; however, Diaz is in fact working to show that even people who believe they understand the full extent of stereotypes, especially men, find themselves subordinate to the ones they are stereotyping. In this story, Diaz shows how female stereotypes actually control the actions of a males seeking intimacy. The man will revert to basic instinct and base his decisions on a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person. The short story focuses its instruction on the ultimate goal of reaching physical intimacy with a girl, but illustrates the definitely different courses of action necessary to take depending on what ethnicity the target girl is. This is where Diaz proves that even by mastering the “predicted” behavior of females through racial stereotypes, the male while appearing to have control of the situation is actually lower than the female.

This story brings to light many of the common stereotypes of girls. These streotypes affect the way he treats these girls because of the preconcieved notions that he has about them. He already has ideas in his head about how they act and what they will do in certain situations. The speaker in turn puts on a front in order to get what he wants from these girls. Rather than staying true to himself and being his own person he chooses to put on a show for the girls in order to impress them and get their attention.

Discussion

To address the question of subjectivity and objectivity in Junot Diaz's “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” is really to discuss a case where appearances are manipulated to the extent that objectivity becomes impossible. The story takes the guise of an instructional manual, purporting to offer advice as to how to act or behave depending upon the ethnicity and social class of the reader's date. But if the true purpose of “dating” is to achieve not only physical, but emotional intimacy—that is, to truly begin to know the person one is courting (and vice versa)—then the advice of the story becomes counter-productive. This then becomes the central irony and driving force of the story. The potential for either participant to know the other, objectively, becomes impossible as Diaz instructs the reader (an assumed male) to pile layer upon layer of subjective façades onto his interactions, masking his history, social status, and even racial characteristics in hopes of manipulating the situation at the expense of emotional intimacy (in the sense of the participants knowing each other's true selves). Likewise, by highlighting the extent to which a person's own expectations of another human being are determined by his or her subjective generalizations about a person's race or class, Diaz demonstrates that while we control the other's ...