Where Are The Women?: SNL's Problem with Black Comediennes

I am not ashamed to admit that at this point in my life, I consider watching Scandal to be one of the highlights of my week. I had a lot of false stops and starts with the show initially: friends tried to convince me "this is a must-see show" or "you'll love it" but each time I tried, my commitment-phobia to the show re-emerged. For whatever reason earlier this spring (obviously, at the exact same time I was meant to be working on my dissertation), I got into it again and stuck with it. Stuck with it so much, in fact, that within three days I had seen every episode. Go figure.

Unlike many others, though,I do not watch Scandal for Olivia Pope. I watch it for Mellie (played by Bellamy Young) and her one liners. I watch it to see what creative, stomach-churning new plot twists producer Shonda Rhimes has created or overseen. The drama is all there, the show has the capacity to make you root for an adulterous couple, and of course, there is the ever present question "what the hell is wrong with Olivia Pope's father?" The show's a treat, if not one that is almost too complex at times for me to truly appreciate.

Kerry Washington's portrayal of Olivia Pope as a steadfast woman who's vulnerability is not wrapped up in the stereotypical trope of black women's victimization is refreshing and enticing. That's why I could hardly have been more disappointed in the way she was compelled to perform as the host of Saturday Night Live on November 2nd. Now, I have been a devotee of SNL for about 15 years and part of me believes I watch it either because I'm masochistic, because I'm nostalgic for earlier days of the show during "the era of the woman" (performers like Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Cheri O'Teri, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey were all on fire from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s), or for both reasons. In any event, I recognize that the show's writers and producers have a limited scope of blackness in American society and of how to involve black comedians in the framework of their sketches. They have had an even harder time incorporating black female comedians into their show.

In fact, in the shows thirty-eight year history, as The Huffington Post has pointed out, SNL has only ever had four black female cast members and Washington was just the 9th black woman ever to host the show. Of the four regular cast members, Danitra Vance and Yvonne Hudson each only performed for one season in the 1980s. Comedienne Ellen Cleghorne fared slightly better (1991-1995) and Maya Rudolph lasted even longer (2000-2007). Let's not also forget that they were four out of 137 cast members the show has ever had, a measly 3%. When asked by The Associated Press about this issue, Lorne Michaels, the show's producer, simply replied "You don't do anyone a favor if they're not ready...It's not like it's not a priority for us...It will happen. I'm sure it will happen."

This lack of concern is nothing new, nor am I shocked by it. When Washington got up on stage and was asked to participate in an insufferable attempt to make fun of the controversy surrounding this topic during the show's opening sketch, it became clear that this episode was not gonna go very far. Washington had to help SNL writers parody themselves by switching from Michelle Obama, to Oprah, to an offstage portrayal of Beyonce while a message streamed about how they don't have a black female cast member who can play majorly popular figures in the American public and about how the two black male characters of the cast have enough seniority now to refuse to dress in drag.

The show ran a series of sketches in which Washington played a "hoodrat" assistant, a jealous girlfriend searching her boyfriend's phone for texts from another woman, a righteous sociology professor who blindly supported Barack Obama, a clown, and a Ugandan beauty pageant who shouted "I keep this dress." Yes, she was versatile. Yes, she could adapt to any character thrown her way. That's a sign of a talented actress and to anyone who's ever seen the woman, it's clear that she has honed her skills and her craft. The reason this episode concerns me is because it demonstrates how much old values about minorities' ability not just as performers but as human beings still remain static.

As evidenced by Washington's performance and in every other episode of SNL, black actors or actresses in recent years have only ever appear on screen to reference the fact that they are black. As if the only thing black people ever do is speak in 1970s blaxploitation jive. As if they have no other concerns. Whether Kenan Thompson is playing Steve Harvey, LL Cool J, Cee-Lo, or Whoopi Goldberg (he has since given this character up), the tone and cadence of his voice remains the same. Even if he is playing a Joe-everybody, a regular guy, his same stereotypical persona seeps into the sketch with the punchline of his jokes primarily being "isn't it so funny that I'm black?"

I wish Washington could've escaped a show that treats black actors (I would say black actresses, but they don't have any at the moment) this way in 2013. As Rhimes has shown, there is room on American TV to have black characters who are rich and complex and funny and vulnerable. She has had two major hit shows, Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, which have managed to include black characters who don't lapse grotesquely into brutal stereotypes about their inability to see anything in the world other than their own color and to be overtly preoccupied by it at every last turn.Why is this issue still a roadblock for many producers in the entertainment industry? Why don't they realize that they are so behind in their view of the world that they may soon become obsolete and that more Shonda Rhimes's will be cropping up in the near future? What's up with that?

Tough Love on the Subject: A Call for a Different Perspective on Black America

After watching CNN presenter Don Lemon's points about the state of the black family and of black masculinity in America, I had a strong reaction to his summary of the problems that many African Americans face. Lemon was bold enough (and some may say stupid enough) to align himself with comments made by Bill O'Reilly earlier in the week. O'Reilly is possibly the epitome of reptilian, conservative, and backwards-leaning principles. This does not mean, however, that his voice, in a democratic society like the U.S., ought to automatically be ignored (it should, in my opinion, be heavily picked apart and criticized but not devalued). In this clip, lemon outlines his stance and his particular points of agreement with O'Reilly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCASEL9mUxM Having had the experience of being called an Uncle Tom while in high school, I'm well aware of the pitfalls of a middle class black woman calling attention to the troubles of the black community at large and the negative reaction it might engender. I won't make my arguments, though, as a means of criticism for criticisms sake. Instead, I'll charge others to think about the ramifications of accepting the suffering of blacks as a marker of black life in a white society that isn't built for them or to support them.
Many people are aware of the debate about the issue of structural problems vs agency as a running theme in African-American history. The idea behind this debate is that structural problems such as limited education and voting rights for black are written into the racist policies of the United States whereas questions of agency charge black individuals to take responsibility for their own predicaments in spite of whatever world order has been pre-established for them by white society. Lemon makes points, for example, about sagging pants as a problem of low self respect (some critics might say he's bought into a notion of respectability fashioned by white, European standards of proper dress) and of the use of the N-word as a tool to "re-claim" the word. As Lemon points out, though, when he mentions a mother admonishing her son and calling him a "nigger" after the child got upset, the question of whether such a hateful term really gives black people power back is often dubious when looked at in a pragmatic sense. Blacks have, for many centuries, focused on education as a tool for progress and have done so particularly in the forcible practice in the past illiteracy amongst slaves. Somehow, however, as Lemon points out, some black people have, in the post-Civil Rights era, turned the process of education and seeking it out into a measure to doubt one's authentic blackness. By buying into the education system, which most of us can agree is largely flawed in and of itself (a separate question altogether, it should be noted), blacks who are ambitious as scholars encounter, at one point or another, criticism both from within and from outside of the black community that suggests that studious individuals are somehow less than black. They are sell outs....oreos...nerds....not authentic. I don't say this an observer: I say it as a person who's directly experienced this practice both in high school and college.
The reason I'm thinking about these topics is not to simply say that black people need to stop blaming outside society and larger racist influences for the problems that many (but not all) African Americans face. I could count hundreds if not thousands of ways that white society and black internalized self hatred have shifted and halted black progress in American society. I don't doubt for one second, for example, that the results of the Trayvon Martin case weren't heavily skewed by Florida's horrendous racial past and present. I don't doubt that the topic I've studied for 3 years, the prison industrial complex, isn't affected by America's ugly racial history. What I do want to ask, however, is how black Americans want to forge a new path for themselves? Yes, Billy Cosby made complicated and problematic claims about blacks being more concerned with their Air Jordans than with their education a couple years ago. And yes, Don Lemon is simplifying the issue of littering in black vs white neighborhoods in NYC as a signal of low self worth in the black community. But when we will we accept the fact that white America, as some people have pointed out, has no regard for our advancement? It's ok and reasonable and right to blame structural forces for the troubles we face and I do this daily. But unless black Americans rally around means to actually change their predicament (whether through education, parenting styles, etc)., what is the point of endless criticism of those who want to direct the challenge for a better future for the black state in America towards black people themselves?
These discussions, while rich and deep, don't change the way African Americans experience every day life.While we are victimized, it doesn't give us strength to wallow in that reality. It's an important fact to acknowledge, yes, and to grieve it. I applaud people, though, who, though it may not seem like it, are optimistic enough to hope that 100 years down the line, blacks in America are not simply limited to a discussion of how America has always failed them and wasn't intended for them but who instead pray that through means of self advocacy (again, no white Congressman can do this for us), black people can heal some of the wounds that have too often defined us. It's tiresome to look purely at the causes for some of the problems in the black community. It is more useful and helpful, at this stage, to call for practical and realistic solutions. Call me privileged, call me stuck up, call me naive: at the end of the day, I don't want African Americans to be purely defined as a culture who haven't had the ability to establish a better predicament for themselves in spite of the obstacles that they have faced. We have too much depth, creativity, strength,and power (if and when we choose to apply it) to be reduced to simplistic charges that we are nothing more than a suffering group of people. Change has been accomplished before, it can happen again, and I believe it's time to stop focusing on non-black interruption of progress and to instead turn our discussion to a question of how we can make our world more bearable on our own terms. --