Unlike some of my friends I still watch FOX's Empire faithfully every week, so previews for Lee Daniels' Star, featuring Queen Latifah, peaked my interest somewhat. However, its pilot failed to debunk reverse racism myth.
The plot follows an orphaned white girl named Star as she escapes the foster care system, rescues her biracial sister Simone from an abusive home and pursues a music career alongside an entitled black industry heiress named Alexandria. While problematic in some regards, Lee Daniels’ musical dramas never fail to entertain viewers.
Like expected, the first episode gave viewers messiness, drama and featured celebrity guest stars such as rockstar Lenny Kravitz and a cameo appearance from Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta star Joseline Hernandez. But there’s just one scene I cannot stop thinking about.
When RHOA star Miss Lawrence’s character joked about the main character’s cultural incompetence working in a black hair salon, she turned around and called her racist. I cringed witnessing the main character, who has been centered in a cast of predominantly people of color and black trans women, had the nerve to call someone racist.
I kind of expected something like this when I realized in the first fifteen minutes of the show, the writers juxtaposed the titular character’s socioeconomic class to the black music industry heiress, but I hoped her whiteness would not prevail. Needless to say I was wrong.
Also, let’s be real, if a white person worked at a black hair salon or barbershop and did not know how to do black hair I would be upset too! Go work somewhere else!
After 2016, I thought we already clarified reverse racism does not exist. White people cannot and never will experience racism because racism requires institutional power to reinforce the systematic discrimination along with it.
While some white people may experience specific instances of racial prejudice, they will never experience the same oppression that people of color experience every single day. Certain conditions do not negate this.
This is not the only time this month that I have seen this idea of racism towards white people reinforced in the entertainment industry. Grey’s Anatomy’s Ellen Pompeo made a comment on Twitter that being married to a black man and having a biracial children made her a target for racism.
While her experiences are real, it is important to clarify that the prejudices she faces for being in an interracial marriage and having biracial children are not the same as living as a black person in the United States. White people always have the option to walk away.
These certain prejudices are confined to contexts and it very important the Hollywood industry does not reverse these roles for entertainment contributing to the erasure of other folks’ oppression.
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