When Jatavia Johnson of the City Girls, affectionately known as JT by the duo’s fans, was incarcerated for fraudulent credit card charges in 2018, she received a two-year jail sentence. When Shannade Clermont was indicted for wire fraud and identity theft, she faced 42 years in prison. Despite serving only one year, before being transferred to a halfway house, she nor Johnson received a Netflix special that depicted their criminal offenses like that of a bubblegum fairytale, with them being painted as resilient heroines who were being unfairly treated by the criminal justice system. Do you know who did receive that treatment? Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey, was the biggest scammer to hit the Upper East Side since Georgina Sparks (see Gossip Girl).

How "Inventing Anna" got it wrong

Last month, Inventing Anna became a part of Netflix lore, thanks in large part to executive producer Shonda Rhimes. The nine-episode miniseries, like many of Rhimes’ projects, uplifted an unhinged and unaccomplished white woman as some sort of victor who was simply misunderstood and deserved forgiveness for her multiple and monumental wrongdoings. Based on the true story of Sorokin, the faux socialite who conned an entire caste level in New York City out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the series is entertaining at best.

Taking viewers on a journey of how this young woman built a reputation for herself based on a fraudulent identity while swindling a startling amount of money from her victims is no easy feat. It also isn’t an easy feat to present all of this through the perspective of a biased journalist who tried her damndest to find the good in Sorokin and prop her up as the quintessential anti-hero who simply needed a little bit of grace. The thing is, Sorokin isn’t a hero. She’s a sociopathic felon who was allowed to evade true damnation because of white privilege.

The lack of grace for Black women

Why aren’t Black women shown grace when they commit serious crimes? Johnson, Clermont and other Black women were ridiculed, becoming the butt of many jokes on social media. Make no mistake, Sorokin can be found in a meme or two, but several staggering differences highlight the inequity of it all. First, Sorokin was actually paid a whopping $320,000 to fork over the rights to her life story for the Netflix special. You read that right; a scammer was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars because she was deemed interesting enough to have her story told. The real kicker out of that is that she used some of the funds to pay off her debt. As if this couldn’t get any more insulting to convicted criminals who aren’t afforded this sort of splendor, the most important difference is that she had the opportunity to tell her own story — a right that Black women rarely, if ever, receive.

How Black women are vilified for much less

This country has a long, sordid history of unfairly deeming who is worthy of mercy and who is not. When Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl, something she had no control over, she was vilified. Jackson, just this year, revealed what truly happened and took control over her narrative. When the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, was accused of making her in-law, Kate Middleton, cry in 2018, she was reviled as well.

Even when Markle debunked those rumors and revealed that Middleton actually made her cry, was there a slight change in perception. These Black women were tarred and feathered in the media for being actual victims, and it was only after they came forward to tell their stories, that the masses had an inkling of a mind change in how they were perceived. From the series’ inception, Sorokin was given the privilege of having some autonomy over her story of duping several people and businesses out of their money. This woman was literally rewarded for being a cold-hearted criminal, while propped up to be some disgraced socialite barbie who was deserving of a second chance, thanks in part to this Netflix special.

Sorokin's white privilege

Could you imagine the headlines if Black women decided to parade around New York City, pilfering thousands of dollars from folks? Could you imagine if they actually recouped some of that capital back from a deal with a streaming company to tell their stories? You probably couldn’t imagine it because it’d probably never happen. Inventing Anna may have told Sorokin’s story with her input, but it failed monumentally by not addressing the ivory elephant in the room: Sorokin’s white privilege. Sadly, white women are given grace and freedom to be thieves, liars and everything else under the gamut of criminal behavior, but Black women are still being denigrated for existing. One has to wonder how the cards may have changed for Sorokin had she been blessed with a bit more melanin. I guess we’ll never know.

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