White as Normal; or, Passing Part Two

I find what Richard Dyer points out in “The Light of the World" very interesting when he states that throughout time and film, “the assumption that the normal face is a white face runs through most published advice.” (p. 94.) Whiteness has been so normalized in this country and as such, so have the cultural and social industries that have been ingrained in society’s mind. It is not that Black people are physically unable to photograph well, but it is that the industry “developed [their tools] with white people in mind…so much so that photographing non-white people is typically constructed as a problem” (p. 90.) The fact that this industry has practically problematized the Black image is heavily illustrated in Imitation of Life. Sarah Jane has always tried to pass as White, and as a very light-skinned Black girl, has been able to do so easily since society assumes that White is normal and that you have to either look non-White, or have to be specifically asked in order to classify as an other. However, when her White boyfriend learns that she has Black blood he beats her. She has successfully passed as White, until her boyfriend learns otherwise. This scene illustrates that the constant danger the White-looking-Black is in when passing as White in society, as the easily identifiable Black person can be classified easily; however, the passing Black has a duty to reveal his blackness but by passing as White, he is, in a sense, lying by omission due to the fact that society’s norm is the white face. Sarah Jane’s boyfriend acts out since he feels as if he has been made a fool of by dating her, just as Hale talked about in Making Whiteness when the White man was flirting with the Black girl on the train and after she got off, all the White women made fun of him. How has this idea of blackness as a problem been constructed/propagated by media technologies and what has been done to combat it?