Issa Rae’s breakout series Insecure is no stranger to stirring up a dialogue on a number of topics in the African American community.  In just two seasons she’s tackled the issues of equal pay on the job, open relationships, gentrification, cheating, interracial dating,  and racism.  

Following every episode I run to my bed, open up my laptop and tweet back and forth with my digital play cousins on Black Twitter, discussing each week’s episode. The conversations never disappoint. Then, I go talk to my housemates about how Issa did this xyz, or why Molly went back to ‘ol dude, or if I’m really feeling Lawrence’s new relationship with that racially ambiguous girl Aparna as if any of these characters are real people and as if any of this has actual relevance to my life.  

But as critically acclaimed as Insecure is becoming, I still think audiences fail to acknowledge one of the most hilarious and simultaneously powerful aspects of the show: Due North the overly dramatic slavery-themed show that plays in the background on the characters’ TVs.

Due North is centered around the forbidden love of an enslaved woman, Ninny,  and her white master. While the mini series sounds like a riveting, heart-wrenching drama, it’s actually just straight up FOOLISH. Hilarious. Comedy Gold. Due North satirizes slavery and parodies other slavery themed  TV shows like Underground, sprinkling in Love & Hip Hop-esque drama. The characters are so ridiculously theatrical and the story line is so cliché that you just can’t help but laugh every time.

Issa’s fresh, comical take on this typical slavery power structure, charters new territory in the TV world, and in a way demonstrates the strength and resilience of African Americans. Rae and her writers reclaim the slave narrative, twist it, and make it funny. Who else could do that? Who else would do that? And are we even surprised? Nah.

African Americans are pros at reclaiming the narrative. We’re resilient and consistently rise from the ashes. We possess the capacity to laugh, sing, and dance despite and in spite of.

It’s how we reclaimed the N-word and turned it into a colloquialism and term of endearment. It’s how we created our own music and style that serves as THE compass of anything cool or relevant in American pop culture despite traditionally being excluded from the media. It’s how Black Twitter still possessed the capacity to crack jokes on Trump’s election night as if it wasn’t one of the most frightening and frustrating nights of some of our lives.

 It’s the same resilient spirit of those that came before us and had the courage to flea North and risk death, to spark slave rebellions all over the country,  to sit at segregated lunch counters, to boycott the busses, to  resist the water hoses and dogs, to demand equal rights and access to education.

While slavery is nothing to joke about, I appreciate Issa and her writers' boldness and ingenuity in transforming the typical slave narrative and not being afraid to laugh in the face of slavery, the original sin that permeates American culture to this very day.

May we all be encouraged to reclaim our own individual narratives, whatever they may be and turn them into whatever we please. Thank you Insecure for telling our stories and reclaiming our narrative.