When you don’t know….you don’t know.”

The first time I heard that expression was in 1997 when I first saw the film Hoodlum. Two characters were in the midst of a Harlem turf battle during a Depression-era numbers racket in Harlem, and mob boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano grouses to Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson about another gangster, Dutch Schultz, and how tackily he dresses. Bumpy’s response? A sigh, a shake of the head and a twist of his cuff links. “When you don’t know…..you don’t know.”

And all of us can relate to how upbringing, financial status, cultural background or even a plain lack of perspective can preclude us from what others understand as common sense. But the more educated and ‘plugged in’ one appears, the more unbelievable those gaffes can be and the quicker they get a clue, the better.

The first misfire comes from Zoe Saldana, an actress known for film roles in Columbiana, Star Trek:Into The Darkness and Avatar. While those portrayals have earned acclaim for Saldana, her decision to portray the late jazz musician and Civil Rights champion Nina Simone has garnered nearly-universal shade. The issue isn’t with her ethnicity, but with Saldana’s agreement in wearing prosthetics and head-to-toe darker makeup when the role should have been provided to an actress better resembling the late performer. Part of what made Nina such a trailblazer—-her refusal to conceal or apologize for her dark African features to broaden her audience—becomes lost in translation with Saldana’s presence and diminishes the bravery and impact resulting from Simone’s controversial stance.

In July’s issue of Allure magazine, the 38-year-old displays an alarming abundance of cultural tone-deafness by lashing out at critics about how black she is, as if that were the issue rather than her being the exact opposite of what Nina Simone actually looked like: “There’s no one way to be black….you have no idea who I am,” she says. “Don’t you ever think you can look at me and address me with such disdain.”

Really Zoe? I’m also black, but would I accept a role portraying the late Lena Horne? No. Ma’am. I could never be seen as paying credible homage to Ms. Horne because of my dark brown skin and you can never justify attempting to characterize Nina, yet creating a shallow caricature in the process.

Another public figure catching internet dragging is Dr. Steve Perry, one of the country’s most trusted educators and the founder of Hartford, Conn’.s high-performing Capital Preparatory Magnet School. As an outspoken critic of public schools and advocate for African-American boys, it was distressing for his followers to read anrecent tweet from Dr. Perry that proudly proclaimed that he joined forces with the U.S. Army recently to persuade 200 young black men to cut off locs and afros to “connect aesthetics to success.” In other words, Perry leaned on racially-polarizing ‘respectability politics,’ equating the erasure of one’s natural features and cultural practices for easier first impressions and employment opportunities.

One of his most vocal detractors is Dr. Carl Hart, a loc-rocking Ph.D and the first black tenured professor and first black chair in the sciences at Columbia University. His recent opinion piece for theroot.com characterizes Perry’s beliefs as “deplorably ignorant and deeply disturbing,” since “one’s choice of hairstyle has nothing to do do with one’s ability to compete academically or in the marketplace.” When a black man cosigns the Eurocentric idea that his own people’s natural features must be homogenized dismisses personal achievements and reinforces ignorant stereotypes rather than removintg them. Where is the ‘success’ in that?

The late author and poet Maya Angelou left us with many jewels of wisdom, one of them being, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” We can only hope one day that Perry and Saldana will know rather than not know, and finally realize the difference.