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Monday, February 25, 2013

Shawn's thoughts on the show Scandal

I’ve never watched the show Scandal. I never will watch the show Scandal. And I never plan to watch the show Scandal in my life.

Scandal may be made by an African American and feature an African-American actress in the lead. But it promotes the same old White Supremacy to the masses.

As a Black man who believes in Black pride and supports Black-on-Black love, I cannot endorse or support the TV show Scandal. I don’t care if the show was created by a Black woman and stars a Black actress in the lead. I cannot stand behind this show for the same reason I cannot endorse Lee Daniels films like Monster’s Ball, and Precious. I do not support the values promoted by this program or the negative misrepresentation of Black people in it.

There’s nothing scandalous about Scandal. What transpires in every episode of Scandal is something that’s been going on since the earliest days of United States history. Black women like Sally Hemmings have been Negro Bed Wenches for White Slave masters since slavery. There’s nothing special about this program for Black women to take time out of their lives to watch it every Thursday night.

An educated Black woman having an affair with the President? As I see it, it seems she’s not too educated if she doesn’t understand her history enough to know the history of the Negro Bed Wench. And if she’s not smart enough to know her history then she deserves to experience the same fate as those women.

Which was abandoned by their White Masters once another younger prettier piece of Black ass came along. Once he abandoned her, she just became a prostitute selling her body for any man that would have her.

If anything, Scandal is just the sexual fantasy of a Handkerchief headed Sista broadcast for the world to see. Someone deluded into believing that White men see Black women as attractive.

When this has never been true. The Black woman has ALWAYS been at the BOTTOM in terms of desirability when it comes to White Men. If anything this show drives the image of the Black woman deeper into the ground.

The irony is that in the attempts to present a Black woman as desirable to a White Man, Scandal shows me that Black women sell themselves short. Why can’t we get a show depicting Black-on-Black love? In an age where we have a Black man in the White House married to a Black woman, why present this coonery as entertainment? Why can’t we get a show featuring a Black man and a Black woman loving and caring about each other like I grew up with? Why can’t the brothers and sisters of this generation have their own Cosby Show? Why do they have to see their Black woman as a WHORE?

Is the best ABC TV can do is present a Black woman as the President’s mistress? Why not give us a show featuring a Black woman as a supreme Court justice? Why not give us a show about a Black female Secretary of State? Why not give us a show about a Black female president of the United States?

Back in 2003 ABC gave us a show about a White Female President called Commander in Chief. Geena Davis was allowed to play the President of the United States on TV. And last year Julia Louis-Dreyfus currently plays the Vice president on the cable show Veep.

But all a Black woman sees another Black woman on TV is as the President’s mistress. The White man’s whore. The Strong independent Black woman dependent on Uncle Sam to take care of her.

*FACEPALM*

At the end of the day, Scandal isn’t scandalous. It just promotes the racist stereotype of Black woman as the Jezebel, a sexually promiscuous woman with no morals or values who will fuck anyone just to get ahead. Another program in the long line of American media mainstreaming this racist stereotype for another generation of little Black girls as a norm.

I am deeply disappointed in Kerry Washington. She’s following in the footsteps of Halle Berry as the White man’s whore. Thinking starring in this show and debasing and degrading herself by starring in Django Unchained is going to get her career moving forward and get Hollywood executives to take her seriously.

Only she doesn’t understand that her career will fall into the same ditch Halle Berry’s is in currently. After degrading herself by starring in Lee Daniels’ Monsters’ Ball and participating in that graphic sex scene that legitimized and mainstreamed the image of the Black Jezebel for a new generation of Black girls, her career went downhill. After starring in a series of roles where her sexuality was at the forefront she’s faded to the background. And all over the world laughingstock people now see Halle Berry as a joke. She’s now known more for being a minstrel Baby Mama in some ghetto drama with her Baby Daddy than as a serious actress.

Sure Halle Berry won the Oscar. She got a handful of accolades from White America for a moment or two. But at the end of the day Halle Berry lost her soul. In the bigger picture, that gold statue and fifteen minutes of fame weren’t worth the loss of her dignity and self-respect.

And I’m deeply disgusted in the show’s creator Shondra Rhimes. As an executive producer, Rhimes knows how hard it is to get anything featuring Black actresses greenlit. So she creates a show perpetuating the worst stereotypes about Black women for a fellow Sista to star in?

This bitch needs to be slapped in the face.

Shondra Rhimes has the money and the power to create any television show and promote any image of Black people to the masses. But instead of wielding the great power given to her in a responsible manner, she uses it to further oppress her people by promoting the very racist stereotypes her ancestors fought against.

Shondra Rhimes may think she has it made right now. She may think she’s on top of the world with her millions, studio contracts, top-rated shows, and her White husband. But like The Negro Bed Wench who serves her White Masters, soon very soon, she will find out those White Supremacists she’s colluded with will betray her.

And when her husband takes her to court to divorce her, she’ll suffer the same fate as Tonya Pinkins. Google her and learn what happens to Negro Bed Wenches in the 21st Century.

If anything, the show Scandal Shows me how much Black Hollywood has sold out. How disconnected it is from Black America. With all this Black money financing films and television shows, we should be in a second golden age like that of the mid 1980’s through the 1990’s when we saw numerous positive images of Black people in Television and film. But in between sellouts like Lee Daniels, Shondra Rhimes, and Tyler Perry, Black entertainment is regressing instead of progressing. The films and television shows produced by these three feature stereotypical racist images that would be more acceptable in the 1930’s than in 2013.

Moreover, the response to Scandal shows me how out of touch and disconnected Black people are to their own condition as human beings. In 1998, UPN tried to put on a show called The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, featuring Chi McBride As a shuffling servant of President Abraham Lincoln. The Black community at the time spoke out and protested against the show. After four episodes aired, it was cancelled due to low ratings.

But today the same Black audience some 15 years later has become so brainwashed by racist movies like Monster’s Ball, Precious, and The Help that it’s become indifferent and apathetic to degrading images of Black people, especially degrading images of Black women.. The saddest part about the popularity of Scandal is that some Black women even schedule their weeks around watching a program which perpetuates the very racist stereotypes used to oppress them.

Brothers and sisters, Shawn urges you to skip the show Scandal. It’s just more of the same racist nonsense White Supremacists have been selling about Black people for the past 400 years in a brand new wrapper with designer clothes.

If you want to read a movie script about a Black woman who is strong, proud and stands on her own two feet, read All About Marilyn. In that story I show you what happens to Black actresses in Hollywood at the end of the day. Especially the ones who have the pride, dignity and respect to be their own woman instead of the White Man’s whore.

And if you want to read a TV script featuring a positive pretty Black teenager in Beverly Hills, Check out the First Season of All About Nikki. If we had more shows like Nikki on the air, maybe more little Black girls would aspire to be something other than a sex object.

6 comments:

  1. Thank you Shawn for writing about Scandal and its implications of Black womanhood in America. First off, that president is married to his white woman and had a white baby. Kerry Washington's character is just a sidepiece to him who could destroy her life. And, no, I don't watch Scandal because is a destructive show about a Black woman getting her jezebel groove on with a powerful white man. It's beyond disgusting.

    La Reyna

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  2. Answer of the day:

    "Black women need to stop trying to follow the white woman’s manifesto on sexual liberation. It does not work for black women because the social and economic dynamic is totally different. While white women can promote sex in the city and Girls as liberating and progressive, black women can not. Why? Because white society is not plagued by an epidemic of single mothers and illegitimate children. For some reason, white women now how to handle their sexuality with responsibility, whereas black women do not. Trying to imitate white society is precisely the problem. Slutty behavior is slutty behavior whether it be male or female sluts. Upholding being slutty is not progress.

    And this is why young black females should definitely not be having entertainers as role models. Having sex with powerful white men does not make black women more powerful and the idea that it does is downright retarded. But unfortunately it is precisely the kind of mindset of many black female entertainers going back many years and it has not brought them any real power or wealth. You don’t measure power by the ability to sleep with powerful white men, because if that was the measure then Sally Hemming was one of the most powerful women in America and we know she was not."-

    WhatIThink, Clutch mag on Kerry Washington's Scandal.

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  3. I could not agree more! It seems as if hollywood finds the biggest sellouts they can to try to ram down our peoples throats.
    Keep tellin it like it is.

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  4. I find it interesting that the writer of this article has never watched the show.

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  5. Yeah, so u must also be disturbed by Kanye & Kim's relationship huh? Or black men always featuring light skint chicks in hip hop vids. Your article sucks. Grow up!

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  6. This is the new hit show for TV: shocking scandals that go all the way to the top? Whatever happened to comedy or honest romance?

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