Anissa Pierce. Anissa Pierce. Swoon.
My eyes were not prepared for the beautiful scene that I was treated to on this past Tuesday’s episode of Black Lightning. As a black viewer, Black Lightning has delighted me in so many ways through its realistic portrayal of the titular superhero of Black Lightning, aka Jefferson Pierce, (Cress Williams), coming out of retirement to protect himself, his family and his community of Freeland from gangs, crime, corruption and police brutality. However, as a black lesbian viewer, nothing delighted me more than seeing Jefferson Pierce’s oldest daughter, Anissa (Nafessa Williams), kissing and cuddling in bed with an unnamed black woman.
During the three-minute scene, Anissa and the unnamed woman — whose name I later learned was Chenoa — laughed, flirted and discussed their relationship, or more likely, their situationship, of approximately one year. While watching the scene, I couldn’t help but smile. This smile was one of happiness, as much as it was one of sadness. I felt this way because I can’t recall the last time that I remember seeing two queer black women express physical and emotional affection for each other on primetime television.
As a black lesbian viewer in her late twenties, I can count on one hand the number of times that I have seen two black female fictional television characters in a relationship. To my knowledge, primetime television has only depicted black women in relationships in one-episode arcs. Most recently, in a season one episode of Black-ish entitled, “Please Don’t Ask, Please Don’t Tell,” Raven Symoné’s character, Rhonda, comes out to her mother Ruby (Jennifer Lewis). An episode of Dark Angel features Original Cindy (Valerie Rae Miller) in bed with her ex-girlfriend, before her girlfriend is murdered.
While I’m thankful for Black Lightning’s recent contribution to the representation of black lesbians, most of the time when black women are depicted in relationships with other women, they’re not with black women. Popular television dramas like The Fosters, Rosewood, Black Mirror and How to Get Away with Murder all depict black queer female characters with white female partners. Pretty Little Liars and The Bold Type fair a bit better with diversity, depicting their queer black female characters with non-black women of color. While it is not a negative thing for the media to depict non-heterosexual black women in relationships with non-black partners, solely depicting them as dating non-black women implicitly sends the message to young, queer black women, and girls, that romantic love between black women is impossible.
This message is even more troubling considering that black lesbians seem to be one of the most forgotten and underrepresented groups in the media. Compared to black gay, bisexual and queer men, black lesbians have relatively fewer fictionalized stories about our lives, loves and triumphs. Even recently, with films like Moonlight and the news that Issa Rae will be creating a new HBO series called Him or Her, focusing on a black bisexual man’s dating life, it appears that black heterosexual and black gay media’s recent ruminations on toxic masculinity leave little else in the way of public discussion of other queer identities, that aren’t cisgender queer men. I love and respect my black gay, bisexual and queer male counterparts, and I hope that this uptick in depicting non-heterosexual black men in the media doesn’t ultimately leave black gay, bisexual and queer men without the substantive representation that they desperately need in the long-term. I also hope that this increasingly frequent discussion of queer black sexuality can exist in an inclusive manner, without erasing queer black women. Given that two out of the three founders of Black Lives Matter are queer black women, media representation of black queer women in happy, healthy relationships, especially with other black women, is long overdue.
When I see Anissa, I see myself. She’s a 22-year-old medical student and community activist. In the first episode alone, she is arrested for protesting. She also records the police wrongfully restraining her father, Jefferson, because he fit the description of a robbery suspect. Like her, I’m in graduate school and I’m politically active. I have always defended my rights, and the rights of other groups of marginalized people. Seeing myself through Anissa is empowering. Given my own commitment to black love, and my intention to marry a black woman, a brief glance into her complicated relationship with Chenoa is nourishing.
Even though reports have surfaced that Anissa’s canonical love interest of Grace Choi has already been cast, I will enjoy these fleeting moments of black lesbian television romance, lust and everything else in between. Goodness knows how long I’ll have to cherish them, until another television show depicts two black women in a relationship beyond a one-episode arc.
In the meantime, Black Lightning may just take the cake as not only the blackest show on TV, but also the queerest black show on TV. And because of the show’s commitment to not just blackness, but intersectional blackness, I’ll continue to watch.
