THIS.

"The thing that sucks about Girls and Seinfeld and Sex and the City and every other TV show like them isn’t that they don’t include strong characters focusing on the problems facing blacks and Latinos in America today. The thing that sucks about those shows is that millions of black people look at them and can relate on so many levels to Hannah Horvath and Charlotte York and George Costanza, and yet those characters never look like us. The guys begging for money look like us. The mad black chicks telling white ladies to stay away from their families look like us. Always a gangster, never a rich kid whose parents are both college professors. After a while, the disparity between our affinity for these shows and their lack of affinity towards us puts reality into stark relief: When we look at Lena Dunham and Jerry Seinfeld, we see people with whom we have a lot in common. When they look at us, they see strangers."

--Cord Jefferson, Hipster Racism Runoff And The Search for The Black Costanza

(via Racialicious)

...This might actually sum up most of my problem with pop culture. Wow. 

So I've been throwing around the idea of watching HBO's "Girls"

when I finish The L Word, even though I've been reading that there's some controversy because there aren't any Black people, but there's no Black people on Sex and the City ever either and I didn't let that stop me from being entertained by it while I'm waiting for Without a Trace on weeknights when I'm in a place with cable. I have been places where I am the only Black person in a crowded room, and so it is not inconceivable to me that the group of friends that the show follows could all be White, or that I could enjoy such a show. 

What IS inconceivable to me, however, are the beliefs of the show's writer. I cannot, in good faith, or even under any form of irony or curiosity I could drum up, under any circumstances, watch this show (even if finding it online does little if anything to support the writer).

 
I'm not sure you can read that. I wasn't turned off yet in the beginning. She was reported to have said that she doesn't have any personal relationships with black people, and thus can't create a black character. I hoped that this would go off into her saying that she didn't want her own ignorance to contribute to harmful stereotypes, or to go the opposite route and so totally whitewash a character of color that she loses any cultural authenticity. I would have accepted reasonings of that sort, even if I'd rather see people of color on the show. I would have seen that she was coming from a place of...understanding of her lack of understanding, and that kind of a place is honest enough that I could probably have still watched the show.

But then, she continued. The bottom paragraph reads, 

"Writers are supposed to write what they know," Dunham told a reporter. "I don't know any black people, so how do I write about them? I'm not sure how they think. I'm not sure what they feel. I'm not even sure they exist. Is there any conclusive evidence that people can really be black? I don't see color, so I honestly don't know."

YEAH, RIGHT, BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY YOU, WHITE PEOPLE, ARE A HUGE MONOLITHIC GROUP THAT THINKS AND FEELS THE EXACT SAME WAY ABOUT EVERYTHING AND WE, BLACK PEOPLE, ARE A SMALLER  MONOLITHIC GROUP THAT THINKS AND FEELS THE EXACT SAME WAY ABOUT EVERYTHING BUT OUR EXACT SAME WAY IS WHOLLY AND FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FROM YOUR EXACT SAME WAY EVEN THOUGH EVIDENTLY, WE MAY VERY WELL NOT EXIST IN THE WORLD BECAUSE YOUR PRIVILEGED PORCELAIN-COLORED FACE HAS NEVER HAD TO "SEE" COLOR. #ICANT #IMDONE