In her newly released documentary, Hello Privilege. It’s me, Chelsea, comedian Chelsea Handler takes a look at white privilege, how it helps her and her career, and how it affects American culture. I consider myself a relatively privileged person since I don’t have the same struggles as most people of colour have living in America. But, as someone who does not experience white privilege, I wanted to give my view on how Handler explored the topic.
The documentary got a lot of bad reviews; people did not consider it as something that could solve the issue of racism in America. For them, it perpetuated black stereotypes, looked like a fake outreach and no real retrospection from Handler herself. Most reviewers from Rotten Tomatoes say that they didn’t take anything away from it.
Like I said earlier, I don’t have to face the same struggles as people in the United States, so I watched the documentary to learn, and I did somewhat enjoy it. I couldn’t relate to a lot of the issues mentioned as I am a person of African origins who has lived there for most of her life; the struggles faced were different from my own. I never thought about issues like not getting into school because of the colour of my skin, or my parents being pulled over by the police and possibly shot because of how they looked. I lived most of my life not thinking that my skin is an issue for me in my everyday life.
I use the word “somewhat” to describe my ability to relate with the documentary. When you read the title and summary, you don’t really expect the format they gave; I was expecting Handler to investigate how her white privilege helped in her career in contrast to comedians of colour. What I really enjoyed, however, was the different point of views she gave, from white female Republicans to a white rapper. I also learned some new things about how black people lived during the 60s, some of which really shocked me, but I think it was something I needed to know as a young black woman.
Overall, the documentary wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the best either, and I think that it could have been done in a way that would’ve shown what white privilege really is and how it actually works in the contexts of career and national culture.