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. 

This makes me want to watch LA Complex

 Reblogged from come correct

Because seriously when do you see this in pop culture? Uhhhh I think this brings us to a grand total of once. 

HOLD THE MOTHAFUCKIN PHONE

So in recent weeks I'd heard a lot of buzz about this miniseries called "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl". Occasionally some of the blogs I read would post about it, and I would wonder whether this few minutes of my time was worth craning my neck awkwardly at work so that my headphones could reach the computer tower which is far as fuck from the monitor for no identifiable reason. The answer was always, "Eh, I'll go back to it when I get home." But then I would get caught up in other unread posts and other unwritten posts and Scrabble on Facebook and talking to my mom and forget all about Awkward Black Girl. 

I decided to remedy that this morning. BEST DECISION OF MY WEEK. This shit is FANTASTIC. The episodes keep getting longer and her life keeps getting more and more awkward and I LOVE IT. I don't always agree with her (for instance I love spoken word...but not that wack shit they were forced to sit through) and have no qualms about actually eating on a date, but I see a lot of myself in her. 

And I know from all the blogs that I've been reading that the creator of the show is having some funding issues, so I'm thinking about donating ten bucks or so. Every little bit helps, right? On the funding page she has a little description about why she created ABG, which starts off like this: 

"Why ABG exists:
Television today has a very limited scope and range in its depictions of people of color. As a black woman, I don’t identify with and relate to most of the non-black characters I see on TV, much less characters of my own race. When I flip through the channels, it's disheartening. I don’t see myself or women like me being represented. I’m not a smooth, sexy, long-haired vixen; I’m not a large, sassy black woman; an angry Post Office employee. I’m an awkward black girl.
And I’m not alone."

I had two very clear and very interesting reactions to this little introductory snippet to the reason for the show. Reaction number one: I, Maya Reid, of sound mind and body, must confess to you all right now that I have NO PROBLEM identifying with and relating to non-black characters I see on TV. Characters of my own race can be a little more touchy, because I don't see very many black characters--I see "real" black people on reality shows I refuse to watch, but as far as characters...as a kid, Sister Sister was my SHIT, I wanted to be the girl the Famous Jett Jackson liked, and it is still my dream to one day be as bougie as the Huxtables (without any of Bill Cosby's egregious classism in real life). As an adult, I was ALL OVER Girlfriends (like a black Sex in the City, for those who don't know) and still watch reruns regularly, and I can see bits of myself in The Game's Melanie and Nurse Hawthorne and her daughter. I liked the ambition and double-life led by the main characters in last fall's quickly-canceled Undercovers. Huh, that actually seems like a decent number of black characters I can relate to/identify with. But that wasn't my point here.
My point was that I see just as many bits of myself in some White women on television (Bones, Annie from Community) and even in men (House, Reid on Criminal Minds ). Until I came to Princeton, I spent my whole life relating more to White people than to other Black people, and I was okay with that. But the second biggest gift Princeton has given me (the first being a free $200,000 education) is the knowledge of and camaraderie with Black people who are LIKE ME. Because honestly, I'm pretty sure I didn't think that was possible growing up. I had stopped looking for it. 
But they're out there. I've found them at Princeton, and I've found them hailing from all over the country at Yale's Black Solidarity Conference, and I have to say, it is comforting, I suppose. Reaction number two: Based solely upon the legions of women responding to the series, and the fact that it was all over my blogosphere and even my friend C was talking about how much she loves it, THERE'S AN ARMY OF US. And that...seems like it would feel validating if I was still looking for validation. And it is refreshing to have another character to add to the people-who-look-and-think-like-me category. I think my favorite thing about this webseries, though, is the fact that race is often confronted openly in a way that doesn't ever happen on television. And THAT is something I can identify with.   

Marvel must have been as upset as I was

about Disney fucking up and not recognizing the black struggle in Captain America, because some CRAZY-ASS SHIT was announced yesterday: The new Spiderman in the Ultimate Spiderman comic book series IS HALF-BLACK AND HALF-LATINO, with an incredibly appropriate name for such a background: Miles Morales. You heard me, a BLACK AND HISPANIC MAN IS SAVING THE WORLD. Say whaaaaaaaa?

But evidently this is not as uncommon as I had previously imagined. I casually mentioned this to a friend and how I was trying to figure out how I felt about it, and he informed me that Marvel is actually hella diverse in its superhero portrayals. One of the incarnations of The Green Lantern was black, and there was a Black Panther before the Party (though the "Jungle Action" and "savage" themes are a bit problematic, don'tcha think?). A little more digging showed me that various incarnations of Spiderman and Co. have been getting more and more diverse for a while: in 1992 the company released a miniseries entitled Spiderman 2099, in which Spidey was half-White and half-Latino, and the Spider Girl that was introduced in 2005 is a Latina by the name of Anya Corazon. And sure, while my main superhero experiences in life have been admiring Whites superheroes on the silver screen, I certainly remember Halle Berry as the Black Catwoman (damn that woman is sex on a stick, but again with the animalistic thing. Larger questions: why are so many superheroes based on animals? What is this weird fascination with invincible half-man-half-beast creations, especially when those creations are also supposed to be sex objects? Bestiality isn't cool...), and some lesser appearances on the small screen: the Power Rangers usually had at least one token member, Captain Planet's Planeteers were pretty diverse, and the gritty urban qualities of the Ninja Turtles always made them seem kind of Black in my mind.

So the question is, in light of all these cultural representations to the contrary, why do I think "White" when I think "superhero?" Why did I see Racialicious's article about this and think, "Hmm...that's interesting," rather than "Damn, it's about time?" like I did when Disney finally announced its plans for a Princess of African descent? Why was I not bothered by the dearth of mainstream superheroes of color? One of the Ultimate artists was quoted as saying 

"Maybe sooner or later a black or gay — or both — hero will be considered something absolutely normal,”

and while this is obviously something I'm in very strong support of, I just think it's crazy that I didn't recognize a need for it. The nerd-by-day, hero-by-night trope familiars like Peter Parker, Clark Kent (omg I lusted SO HARD after Tom Wellings on Smallville when I was in high school; I'm not even gonna front--oh hey, and the hottie from the Famous Jett Jackson grew up to be Cyborg on Smallville for a hot minute), and even the kids from Kick Ass was something I could buy into and identify with regardless of race. And don't get me wrong, I think that's fantastic...but not when it stands in the way of me seeing larger problems in popular culture. Anyway, I applaud Marvel for their [evidently consistent] efforts to diversify and dig themselves out from under the mountain of white privilege their characters have simply by having been created in a time when that shit was PC. 
Sigh, except some people evidently still think that shit is PC, because this is already an internet meme:

Evidently some people are still scared of men of color in masks...

PS It should be noted that DC is working hard to integrate the field of superhero-dom too, with characters like Vixen (another hypersexualized black woman being compared to an animal, greattttt), The Amazing Man, Cyborg (though the only part human thing worries me a bit), and Kid Quantum, among others. I didn't want to not give props where props were deserved. If you want to see a list of all the black superheroes to ever exist in the history of the university under any comic company, check out Wiki's list. There are a lot of them, yeah, but the fact that I've never heard of most of them goes to show that there's still a balance issue.
PPS: THE BEST THING I'VE SEEN ON THE INTERNET REGARDING THIS ENTIRE TOPIC: 

"And really, there’s nothing new about people of color receiving disproportionately exposure to environmental radiation and medical experiments. A few good superpowers is the least they deserve." --Channing Kennedy for Colorlines

More truth is in that statement than I can possibly get into right now, so I'm gonna...uh...*drops mike, walks away*