​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. 

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    I'm Team Nene. The Real Housewives of Atlanta did not become a regular part of my audio-visual diet until the season the cast took a trip to South Africa. When the show aired in Atlanta, it was the talk amongst my co-workers, friends, and my family. And stories about this woman named Nene dominated all other details about the series. However, I didn't own a television (still don't), and the iPhone hadn't yet evolved to its current web-viewing functionality. As a result, I didn't see the show on a regular basis.
    My impression of Nene from the few episodes and clips I viewed was she's ghetto, proudly perpetuating the angry, ratchet Black woman stereotype for money. When I tuned into Season 4, I waited for the loudmouth trouble-making Nene, the one who justified all this hate, to appear. But that Nene did not surface that season or any subsequent season. But this image of Nene remained firm in my mind, although I saw no evidence of this behavior. Instead, what I saw in Nene was an around the way girl from Georiga, the life of the party type who makes everyone laugh just by the way she delivers an "okay" at the right time and in the right tone. So what's the hate about?
    Nene is the type of Black woman whom we've been conditioned to believe SHOULD NOT have it all. Physically, she's tall and dark-skinned, not model skinny like Cynthia Bailey or Porsha thick. She didn't graduate college, and she's a former stripper who had children by two different men. Unlike Eva, with whom Nene has a lot in common, she doesn't have White-adjacent features or valley girl disposition, that enables Eva to escape the ratchet Black woman box, that people (including Eva) put Nene in. This is why she's a target.
    When people see a woman like Nene at the top, there's a feeling of imbalance. Scroll through tweets or YouTube, and you'll see comments like "Kandi is a grammy-award winning singer and songwriter," "Kenya was Miss USA," and "Cynthia was a model." The implication is these are the types of women who deserve or who have rightfully earned success—not a woman like Nene, who is the only cast member whom fans regularly refer to as an animal, "a moose," to be exact. 
    Production is hip to this larger sentiment and seemingly creates a storyline that maligns Nene to restore balance. The sad thing is her castmates, also Black women, are happily complicit. Many commentators have dismissed Nene Leakes's claim that production suggested that she not wear white to the Season 12 reunion because two of her castmates selected the color for their wardrobe. As a result, when Nene arrived at the virtual reunion, she was the only castmate wearing Black, while everyone else was in white. Her husband, Greg, and her friend rightly advised her to change her ensemble because she would appear as the black sheep. The Real Housewives of Atlanta is not a video diary. We are watching a professionally produced product, a TV series. Bravo is in the business of marketing a storyline. But they face a conundrum: their star, the one who brings in the eyeballs (viewers) is not "congenial" by dominant standards, so they position ( a marketing term) Nene as a villain. And Cynthia is usually constructed by the show as the target of Nene's bullying.  Now, why Cynthia? Cynthia is a model. She knows how to sell a product. However, she cannot draw eyeballs, so to attract advertisers, the series creates this good/bad Black woman dynamic. Nene has frequently stated she doesn't know why Bravo conceals Cynthia's more shady behaviors.  But the reasons become more apparent as seasons progress. 
    Now, I've grown to respect Nene and applaud her for walking out of the reunion. It's her job to deal with shade from castmembers, but she should not tolerate what she considers to be shade or mistreatment from production. A Google search of Nene's name will return a slew of negative stories from various entertainment sites. This type of skewed imaging has the potential to impact her brand. Hopefully, Black women will see some of Nene in ourselves and stand with her. We are not all model-valley girl types, and we shouldn't be vilified for being from around the way.

*The views in this blog represent the opinions of the writer, who makes no claims of being privy to insider information.