Let's Talk About Race and Reality TV

​Reality TV has a colorism problem because the world has a colorism issue.  Colorism, or any form of intraracial antagonism, is difficult for viewers, including the Black ones, to unpack. It's important to point out that racism is not a character flaw. It's a commonsense system that orders society. When authority figures accost Black individuals for "loitering" at a gas station, this treatment doesn't register as fundamentally racist. However, loitering laws were implemented soon after the end of slavery because of the 13th Amendment's loophole that allowed enslavement as a penalty for crimes. Before the end of slavery, Black people couldn't move freely without papers, a device such as a lantern, or the company of a White person. Policing the mobility of Black people has become commonsense. As a result, we don't question it. We think the Black person was in fact a loiterer or a menace in some way. And Black people are not immune to racist thinking. 

When Black people describe a vocal Black woman as "aggressive," "ferocious," "hood" or "rachet," they are mobilizing loaded terms that come with a history and an image. This history and image are what make the terms effective because the stereotypes/images the terms invoke resonate with masses of people. In my opinion, Ashley and Gizelle are aware of the advantages their light skin affords them in a racialized society, so they used these terms to describe brown-skin cast members (Candiace, Wendy, and Monique) because, again, they know the terms affirm firmly entrenched biases. This coded language is in line with our society's turn away from biological to cultural racism. It's no longer widely acceptable to say Black people are genetically inferior, and their dark pigmentation is the mark of that inferiority. Now people make statements such as "That Black woman was raised in the ghetto with other low-class Black people who instilled no values, restraint, or self-dignity." This comment masks racism with a deficit cultural logic.

This cultural logic often intersects with class, nationality, physical features, sexuality, and gender. Viewers called out Eva Marcille's "nappyheads" comment because the coded classed, antiblack (regarding features associated with Blackness) and gendered implications were obvious to those viewers who have been the target of such language. It's not my intent to attack reality TV stars. Rather, when such intraracial antagonistic moments arise, it offers us an opportunity to confront and, possibly, to heal deep wounds. 

Monique's conflict with Candiace is rooted in classed-based intraracial antagonism that carried over from Monique's interactions with Gizelle. Gizelle and Candiace are BAPS, who rejected Monique's attempts to befriend them as equals. Similarly, as I stated in a previous post, the negative evaluations of Nene expressed by many RHOA viewers and cast members are rooted in featurism and classism. A deep Afrophobia, a hatred for Black Africans, is what propels the venom that is directed at Wendy. Whereas many Black people have an understanding of colorism and featurism, Afrophobia hasn't been as dissected in popular culture. Remember the scene from Alex Haley's Roots where the White slaver insisted upon beating "the African" out of Kunta Kinta. To better ensure enslavement, it was necessary to rend by violence any semblance of a human heritage from people whom slavers sought to turn into chattel. That meant forcing the enslaved to sever ties with names, religions, language, and indigenous customs—anything that would remind the captured black being that they are a Black person with a history.  Because Africans were threatened with violence, it was to their advantage to sever their cultural ties. Today, many descendants of Africa harbor a deep disdain for anything or anybody that registers as African. And this hatred or Afrophobia, like colorism, has become commonsense. So the kids who called their African classmates "African Bootyscratchers" in grade school are now adults on Twitter calling Wendy "aggressive" for displaying the same energy that Ashley has often directed to her cast mates.

 I want to end this blog entry with a reminder that racism is not about one's character. It is a system that orders our lives. A system that offers benefits to people and ways of being that diverge from Blackness. Once we begin to deeply contemplate this order of things, we can begin to work to change it—starting with our favorite reality TV shows.