by Mandy Harris-Williams

Last Monday, The Bachelorette premiered to 5.7 million viewers. This time, the bachelorette is Rachel Lindsey, a 31-year-old attorney from Dallas. She is the first black person in the role, and this change in tone interested around a million fewer viewers than the previous two season premieres.

Beyond the obvious elevation per grace and likability that Lindsey brings to the role of Bachelorette, many have hailed the casting as a necessary and important change in a show that has been too white and sometimes difficult for black viewers to stomach. But a Black Bachelorette is limited progress and the spoils go to white America.

I have always watched The Bachelor/ette with the same pro-Black competitive hope as I watch the Olympics. A mix of sociological, psychological, and personal curiosity. I want to see how many of us qualified, how we play the game, how we interact, and, ultimately, how we fare in the competition.

It must be mentioned that although the cast is far more diverse than every other season of the show, only 11 out of the 31 suitors in the first episode are Black. There’s a bit more representation from South Asian and East Asian men, but overall, only 14 out of those 31 suitors were discernibly ethnic, while two others looked like white guys, but spoke a different language at some point during the premiere.

The first night, Rachel sent 10% of white guys home, 0% of those who looked white, but spoke another language home, and 29% of the men of color home. Black and brown contestants are still dismissed with relative ease.

A Black Bachelorette is a victory for representation, but what good is representation itself in this scenario? In a Post-Obama era, having seen blacks ascend to the highest offices in the world, the highest platforms of representation possible, we should predict that Bachelorette uplift will be ineffective.
It may inspire some to see themselves as more deserving of fairy tale (read: fake) romance, and this might engender a sort of self esteem in some, I’d imagine, but it doesn’t do anything to combat white antagonism -- rather, it seems to do the opposite.

Representation stokes racist fires, but fails to push back the tide of material white privilege. Representation allows white people and white television networks to disburden themselves, to believe that their deeply embedded racism is absolved. And the representatives?  To presently observe the Obama’s shedding some of their previously obligatory conservativeness makes it apparent: the responsibility to represent can dull the shine of the individuals expected to carry the burden. Maybe that’s why Rachel tends to act a bit too polite at cloying, inappropriate code switches and attempts to appeal to her blackness. (One contestant told her he was “ready to go Black and never go back,” and she told him she liked it. Yuck!)

It will be a sick thrill, the type I expect from this show, as I watch who tries it and how Rachel responds. These shows are nasty in premise, and it makes for addicting entertainment. Much for the same reason I was thrilled to the point of shrieks at “Get Out,” The Bachelor/ette is socially horrifying.  Regular viewers of the show tend to take cast members with a dose of “would they do that if there weren’t all those cameras around?”  This season, the racial element has me questioning, “would they have done that if she weren’t black?” Like the seemingly caring elderly white ladies in the garden who admonish her: “don’t sleep with all of them.” Like the guy who tickles her within a minute of meeting. Like the freestyling outtakes. (Re-cringing at the thought!) Shallow representation brings these coarse attempts at managing difference to light, but it doesn’t offer outcomes that sustain uplift.

It is notable still that the show and it’s contestants struggle to establish strong interracial relationships. No Black person has been chosen as a winner on the show. And if that trend ends this year, it will, at best, prove (to whites who were previously unsure) that Black women are relatable, attractive and charming, and that they are able to identify a mate when provided a national team of casting directors, a multi-million dollar budget to spark romance, and the time and freedom to do so without other obligations. Most Black women don’t have access to these resources. This is the ultimate shortcoming of this particular representation: it’s unrealistic.  It is yet another confusing point in the constellation of messages that suggest how we should love black women.

Most fascinating is how the Black Bachelorette shows us that attraction is socially, politically and structurally determined. Put any one of the contestants in a room with Rachel among other (shades of) options and they might not even look her way. Place her as the central love interest and watch vanity and ego take over. Lest we forget, The Bachelor/ette is a competition as much as it is a matchmaking show. The contestants are there to find love, but this love is bungled up in spectacle, ego and temporary fame, in television’s patina of desire.

Rachel Lindsey, first black bachelorette represents progress for white people. They'll feel a bit more connected to blackness, and console themselves that like these representative good white people on the show, they too could date a black woman... one like Rachel at least. But this representation doesn't do much for black women. Black women, especially dark black women have a racialized un-desirability problem, not a romantic analysis problem. It's not that we're unable to select in a fantasy world where everybody sees us as attractive, worthy, marriage material and there's no competition for mates. It's that our race too frequently puts us at a disadvantage when there is. A truer indicator of race blind love will be when a person of color is chosen from a diverse pool of contestants, by a person who is not of that same race. But this consolation has its practical limitations as well. Anyways, it's unlikely that we’ll see it anytime soon --  I’ll hold my breath for the 43rd season.

Header photo courtesy of ABC

Mandy Harris-Williams is a writer, educator and artist living in LA. She writes at mandythinks.com.

by Raquelle Harris

It’s no secret that the representation of Black women on TV continues to lag behind our White counterparts. It speaks volumes that after almost 70 years of the Emmy awards’ existence, Viola Davis is the first African-American to win for Best Actress in a Drama. As Viola indicated in her acceptance speech, the opportunities for Black actresses remain limited. Characters like Annalise Keating (How To Get Away With Murder), Olivia Pope (Scandal) and Mary Jane Paul (Being Mary Jane) are examples that progress has been made, however, this ‘progress’ is constantly challenged and critiqued.

by Diana Veiga

Acclaimed author (and Black woman oracle) Toni Morrison once said that Black women are the original girlfriends. “Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn’t have each other you had nothing,” Morrison said in a conversation with Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni for Essence.

by Patricia D. Raspberry, Ph.D.

Earlier this year, I gave up Facebook for Lent. My decision was based, in part, on my desire to make a sacrifice that would actually feel like a sacrifice and not a convenient way to save money, give my liver a break or lose 10 pounds. As an admitted Facebook addict, I knew this was going to hurt.

by Kimberly Denise Williams

We all believe that no children’s television program will ever be as good as whatever we watched as a child. But anyone growing up in the 1990s or before can probably count on one hand the number of cartoon characters of color featured on the various networks of the time. Save for the occasional children’s cartoon that explicitly featured characters of color—like Fat Albert, WayneHead, or my personal favorite C Bear and Jamal—cartoons have largely been a place for mainstream white images to dominate, much like the rest of American media.

by Inda Lauryn


Any pop culture enthusiast or critic who pays attention has noticed that the 2014-2015 television season brought more black and brown faces to the small screen. While many of us celebrated television’s acknowledgment that this diversity brings in viewers, white women seem to have gone into a tizzy. In March, Deadline op-ed writer Nellie Andreeva published the article “Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings -- About Time or Too Much of a Good Thing?” in which she muses that “the pendulum might have swung a bit too far in the opposite direction” from television’s mostly white presence. (The article has since been retitled “Pilots 2015: The Year Of Ethnic Castings,” as the previous title “did not correctly reflect the context of the article.”)

by Diana Veiga

Victoria Rowell, 'The Young and the Restless' actress who played Drucilla Winters on the soap opera, is suing the show's producers for refusing to re-hire her, a decision she believes is motivated by racism.

by Inda Lauryn


In Marlon Riggs’ documentary Color Adjustment, Daphne Maxwell Reid recalls the excitement of anticipating black faces on television in the 1960s. She remembers that her mother and other members of the family who thought twice about long distance phone calls in instances of emergencies would not hesitate to call each other to announce that a black person would be on television that night.

When a new show that stars a talented cast of black actors airs, we’re in all the way, eager to support a black narrative and the chance to end the first season with a long-awaited exhale, appreciation for a TV program that finally gets the black experience right.

Black sitcoms were huge between the late 1970s and mid-1990s. I mean, who doesn’t know all the lyrics to the catchy theme song of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Indeed, there was a little bit of everything to pick from. Before Sex and The City with Carrie Bradshaw, besties united over Living Single. A Different World showed the college experience of young Black adults, making the audience want to move into the dorms with Whitley and Jaleesa… but not necessarily in the same room.

by Tyler Young

by Tierra C. 

As a black woman, who also happens to be member of a historically black sorority, I’m confused about and in awe of the elitism of my peers. After years and years of Love & Hip Hop, Basketball Wives, and other Monday night foolery on VH1, now you all want to be upset at VH1’s portrayal of black women because it finally hits home? Really? Wake up.

by Morgan Parker

by Brittany Dawson

Last week, I grabbed coffee with a former classmate at Starbucks. We laughed, gossiped about How To Get Away With Murder, and discussed books we were reading. Somehow the conversation shifted from books to race, perhaps the controversial election of South Carolina Black Republican senator Tim Scott inspired this change. Everyone had an opinion.

by Gina Torres

Scandal is arguably one of the best dramatic shows currently on television. It is also one of the most groundbreaking TV shows because its African-American female lead,  Kerry Washington’s character, Olivia Pope, is neither streetwalker nor drug addict. Pope is educated, glamorous, and the owner a successful company. She is a sought-out expert in her field. However, like most of us, she is flawed. She is in love with a married man, who also happens to be the President of the United States. And he is white.

by Kimberly Wilson

By now, we’ve endured four seasons of Olitz and simply put: They get on my last nerve. How much longer can we watch their love unravel on screen, knowing that it is probably the worst relationship in TV history? (Scratch that. Joseline and Stevie J may take the cake.) If you’re like me, you’ve got a laundry list of reasons why you’re sick of Olivia and Fitz, but I’ve narrowed down the top 5 reasons below.

Iyanla,

Before your show I never felt like just one of 34. I have always had a great and close relationship with the eight of my siblings that I do know. We have a very supportive and loving family overall. We are in constant contact, so it has always felt totally normal. Sure, I always knew that I had an unusual amount of siblings out there, and yes, I resented my father for it. I never, however, despised what he created. All of my siblings are a blessing, and they all matter, but I resented what he would not do. Yes my mother is the first, and she is an amazing woman--nothing short of an inspiration. She has done great on her own despite my father’s absence and having so many children. It would be asinine to say he wasn’t necessary. It was just extremely difficult for us to expect anything from him at all. Let’s be honest, you cannot expect a man with 34 children to do something as ordinary as tucking you into bed every night. You certainly cannot expect that same man to put you and your 33 siblings through college. You cannot expect to see him during the holidays, your birthday, or even at your college graduation. Zero expectations. Sero consistency. What does a person like that teach a child about how to socialize? Have no expectations? Have no voice? Set no boundaries? I will admit that I have had to ask myself each of those questions at different points in my life, but the reoccurring question was always: “When will the day come when my Father will be held accountable and how?”