All of My Best Friends Are Black, And That’s Ok
I don’t like Girls. Revolutionary thought, right? I know. Since the HBO show’s premiere two weeks ago, I’ve read all types of moaning about the show, the story of four twenty-something brown-haired white women making a way and doing slightly better than Florida Evans in seemingly homogeneous Brooklyn. The prevailing complaint about the show has been about all those people of non-color living, mating, and getting by in America’s biggest melting pot of a city. How could it be, many, many (too many) people have wondered, that they couldn’t find any color in Brooklyn?! I mean, besides the homeless Black guy that yelled at “Hannah” to “smile!” (There are people of color in Girls’ world, they just, well, color the margins life for the people of non-color.)
In all the Girls talk, there’s emerged a prevailing ideas that New York City proper, with inhabitants that undoubtedly rep every country and city on Earth’s face, is this place where people of all cultures gather around the Empire State Building and do some sort of collective kumbaya chant where we express tolerance for every race, religion, and creed. Nightly.
I’m almost certain where this lure of the New York melting pot came from. It’s a bunch of people from everywhere, living in close quarters, and so in theory, they would all intermingle on more than public transportation and then find common human interests like, you know, surviving this city and become friends. Surely that can happen, but what’s been my experience in application is it doesn’t for a lot of people. Of course, there’s potential for New York to be a melting pot, if you prefer it that way. But it can also be as segregated as a Jim Crow Mississippi, complete with the crazed police brutality, but without the separate but equal signs.
The crowded streets of Times Square look like the figurative UN (all tourists, so you know) and by convenience and for time efficiency, you’ll see people of all colors, including the Mayor, smashed together on the subway come rush hour. But for, dare I say, many New Yorkers, sharing a knowing eye roll across an empty aisle to whomever from wherever when the inevitable kid enters the subway car to sell M&Ms and recite the scripted speech about hustling on the train–”Not for no basketball team, but to have money in my pocket so I won’t be robbing you”–can be as meaningful as your NYC encounter with another race gets.
I will have lived here ten years come late August, and I have just one non-Black friend. She’s Puerto Rican, from The Bronx. Unlike Zoe Saldana and LaLa Vasquez-Anthony, she doesn’t claim “Black” even if she could be mistaken for such. I rarely see her, maybe once a year, as she’s a workaholic and a mother. We met when her husband was still her boyfriend, and clicked. End of story. Everyone else who I could call at 2 AM in the midst of a crisis and actually expect to answer and care is Black.
I heard their adding a black girl to the show Girls.
Here’s her description “23-26 years old. Adam’s best friend. A tough, tiny lesbian. RECURRING. Likes: biking without a helmet, making her own soap and preserves, bar fights, Brigitte Bardot. Hates: needy girls, most of Manhattan, the messages her mom leaves on her machine, when Adam lames out and stays home.”
Courtesy of Jezebel.com
I think black people should be careful and stop expecting white people to include us in everything.
The black girl on this show likes to fight.Are any of the white girls on the show violent?
I also think it’s interesting that she’s a lesbian.
I wonder how many, if any, of the white girls on the show are lesbian?It would come as no surprise to me if none of them are.Though I am happy for lesbian black women to be portrayed on television in my opinion them adding a lesbian black girl is a way for them to hire a woman of color who will not be a threat or competition for these girls in regards to men.I believe it was probably done to protect white womanhood and maintain white women’s desirability among the male population.
I wonder how masculine will they make the black woman character in relation to the other women?Not all lesbians are masculine.
Any way I think the responses to the show introducing a black girl will be interesting.
*they’re*
“Though I am happy for lesbian black women to be portrayed on television in my opinion them adding a lesbian black girl is a way for them to hire a woman of color who will not be a threat or competition for these girls in regards to men.I believe it was probably done to protect white womanhood and maintain white women’s desirability among the male population.”
BINGO!!
“I think black people should be careful and stop expecting white people to include us in everything.”
ITA. There is a downside to integration.
What I’ve been saying tisme. Who knows what we will wind up with since they don’t have a blk writer on staff. One of the staff writters(Arfin), seems pretty darn insensitive.
NinaG, the photo in your gravie is stunning.
I agree with tisme and Kacey, re: the lesbian situation.
There is nothing wrong with being a lesbian, IMO, but I will find it odd if they throw a token Black lesbian character into a show with heterosexual white females.
Even the main character, Hannah, is considered relatively chubby and plain…yet she still gets plenty of play from guys. So why can’t they also portray a Black woman as being equally desirable to men, if they must include a Black woman at all?
I’m so glad you wrote about NYC not being the melting pot people think it is. Yes there are people here from everywhere, but that doesn’t mean they mix and blend freely. Matter-of-fact, I explained to someone not too long ago that I’ve experienced more overt racism in NYC than I every did when I lived in the [very homogenous] midwest! And, guess what: most of those incidents were direct at me from other so-called minorities who, operating on the racial hierarchy that inevitably springs up in places of extreme diversity, tend to look down on blacks as being at the bottom.
*ever
OMG. Same here. The most racists comments I have heard have come out of the mouths of West Indians. As a Detroiter, everyone is just Black. But, in NYC there are levels of Blackness. I stopped telling people I was African American until after they met me so they wouldn’t judge me.
Same here. I live in SanFrancisco and yes it is diverse but we have liberal racism; we accept you if you u are in dire need of food, shelter or drug intervention. In otherwords you have to be a victim of some sort.
But my best friends are not black.
Same here in Miami. It is very sad. Hispanics are typically the racists in my neck of the woods.
@ Mercedes…my mother is West Indian (Jamaican) and despite living in the US since the 1970s, she still has a certain mindset about most Black Americans. It hurts me to hear my otherwise kind, intelligent mother saying certain things.
But I believe that it all comes down to internalized racism. I won’t lie…some Black Americans have treated me very poorly. But I still find so much beauty and positivity in Black American culture and in Black Americans themselves. I’ve never agreed with anyone, West Indian or otherwise, bashing Black Americans because it is pure ignorance.
Am I mistaken or did the criticism for the lack of diversity in “Girls” come from WHITE viewers first?
I think that you may be right.I think both white and black people were the first to complain about the issue.I know I heard some white feminists complain about it around the same time I heard a few black women complain about the lack of diversity.
I kinda didn’t care either way because the show is called Girls.I think the name killed it for me before I even got the chance to watch the episode.Same with that movie The Women.