“Girls” racism backlash
This post is a little off topic, but let’s address Girls and the show’s apparent “lack of diversity.” Before poor lil’ Lena Dunham could even counter with a second episode, media folk have (more articulately) expressed:
BAH! Why is every major character WHITE? That black guy in the end is poor and scary! And that Asian is wearing nerd glasses and is really good a Photoshop! RABBLE RABBLE!!
It’s like they’re saying, “Homegirl, we don’t care that you’ve somehow written/directed/starred in your own widely acclaimed HBO show at the age of 25. You racist.”
He’s going to hate me for mentioning this, but it’s like the time I cleaned the apartment, did our laundry and cooked my boyfriend a four course meal and he’s like, “Um, did you buy me any chocolate?” What the eff, notice how this place is spotless?? What about how I excellently paired the cheese course with the red wine?? Why does your brain wrap around that one little detail when I knocked everything else out of the park?
So Dunham, in the process of like producing/scripting/starring in an entire 30-minute pilot, hell a whole show, let “diversity” accidentally fly out the casting window. RABBLE RABBLE!
Frustrating. And let me say that just because you throw in some diversity it doesn’t mean you’re being less racist…what the hell is up with the heavily accented Chinese man in 2 Broke Girls? (And the jazzy Black guy and the crude Eastern European on that note…)
Or Cameron, the flaming gay stereotype, in Modern Family…
Sassy Mercedes from Glee…
And Ron, the raging Libertarian in Parks and Recreation? 
(That last one didn’t count, I love Ron. I love Parks and Rec.)
Why isn’t any other show put under the same scrutiny? Friends, Seinfeld, Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, fuckin’ Real Housewives of New Jersey. And it’s in magazines, movies, commercials, too. L.I.L.Y. W.H.I.T.E.
So I guess the Angry Asian in me would love to see someone look more like me on the screen. It does make me mad when diversity is reduced to a stereotype. Racial or cultural sensitivity is important and should be better represented in an increasingly cosmopolitan world. But give the girl a little credit…Dunham even said recently that the show’s whiteness was a total accident.
Girls is not a show about #whitepeopleproblems but about #privilegedmillenials, a hashtag that I also neatly fall into. If someone told me they were about to create a show about a broke-ass 20something aspiring writer living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn having dinner parties with her white friends, I’d go ahead and sue them for copyright infringement.
I enjoy shows because they are GOOD, not because they are being racially or culturally sensitive (and honestly a show like that would be really boring). I’m scared that if/when Dunham casts a non-white major character, she would be put under magnifying lens scrutiny—something she shouldn’t have to worry about when she’s busy making sure her show doesn’t suck. I’m a lot more offended by a sucky show than by one where no one looks like me. Everyone else should be, too.
That said, episode 2 recap tomorrow.
