For all the talk of “diversity” in modern TV and film you’d think Hollywood would have finally learned how to write a Black character that’s a nuanced human being. However, when you turn on any streaming service, you’ll soon understand that the reality isn’t so simple. Black characters are now making more appearances in media. However, the more and more we as the audience see them, the more harmful stereotypes are cast on the characters. In recent years I think the most common is the “ghetto” funny Black female archetype, the “gay” Black male fashionista, or the “fighter.”
I believe that representation just for looks or to fill a blank space isn’t really representation; it’s a cover-up or decoration for views.
Yet, when we dive deeper into this, the lack of nuanced Black representation doesn’t come from the lack of Black talent. To me, it stems from the lack of Black storytelling power. Writers’ rooms are still overwhelmingly white in today’s society, making show-runners run to what they “know” instead of what’s true. They do this because it’s marketable; a shorthand; a way to get a participation award without having to fully invest time into the character.
That’s all it takes for a lot of people. Just slapping a Black person in a role and then letting it stand as this simplistic monolith. I don’t want this to sound as if I’m saying there aren’t any shows where we get something more nuanced. I think that just recently with the show Forever by Mara Akil, it showed us that Black characters can be done right. The female lead, Keisha, was demonized online for it, too, because I think it was so new for the culture to see a character express and go through so many emotions within one show.
When things are written right, people will have a realistic reaction; people start to attract and converse about the complexity and depth of the characters and not how they’re just there for looks or for comedic purposes, purely.
So going into this new year, I want people, especially consumers of media like Beauty in Black, or Baddies, to be advocates of these corporations to show us in a more effective limelight, and to show that we are complex, that we are smart, that we are sad, that we are everything and anything we set out to be.
