I think something we have been seeing is mindless diversity. White show runners, writers, and directors believe that having a Black character is enough to win them points and that they don’t have to actually engage with the marginalized identity given to the character. You can’t just make a white character Black without considering what that means. Certain scenes or choices that are okay for white characters become marred in racism and racist histories when the character is Black. You can’t be blind to the power dynamics that exist in our real world. You can’t turn a character Black but still give them storylines that are soaked in racism
Making your only villain a woc who is mean and cruel to your white Woman protagonist is bad! Making your Black character a savage monster is bad! You can’t just slap on new identities to characters without considering how those new identies changes how the character interacts with the storyline and the real world.
Of course you can have Black characters or characters of color that do bad things but you need to pay close attention to the narrative around that character. It’s not groundbreaking to have a bitchy mean Black girl or the sexually provactive, fiery Latina.
White writers refuse to let go of ideas of white fragility and white female victimhood when making their white woman characters and gleefully use the abuse and domination of the big bad poc to show how empowered she is.
Tag: isms
We need much more media that features women of color in relationships with other women of color. Most of the media that does show lbpq women of color characters puts them in relationships with white women/white people. And those relationships, predictably, tip the balance of power in favor the white person. You’ll notice that plot narratives center around emphasizing the autonomy of the white woman/white person at the expense of the woman of color’s health/wellbeing/autonomous development.
Also, it’s incredibly important to show healthy romantic love between two women of color. We need the power to reclaim our capacity to love, to be loved, and to rid our lives of whiteness and the white gaze as much as possible.
Just Sha 