This won't be the first time you're hearing this: we are currently in a renaissance of black media. Not only are we seeing a huge increase in black faces on screen, we are seeing an increase in black names in the credits as writers, directors, and producers.
With creative power comes responsibility. Black creatives are currently taking on the challenge of crafting a new frame of which to view our people, our culture, and our place in the world. This is why it is disappointing to see black male creators reproduce the same toxic tropes in many of these new films and television shows: in particular, the exclusion of a spectrum of black women. That is, an overrepresentation of light skinned women in leading roles.
Recent and upcoming films from black creators fall into this tired old pattern. Superfly, Sorry to Bother You, and BlacKkKlansmen, all directed by black men, feature fair-skinned black or mixed-race women in leading roles as accomplices and love interests. While it is not surprising to see these casting choices, it is certainly tiring.
It seems that as more black creators get their images on screen, the only ones who manage to depict darker-skinned women with any nuance and care are black women. Issa Rae, Ava DuVernay, and Shonda Rhimes have all managed to offer a spectrum of black womanhood in their creations, not at the expense of interesting depictions of black men. So, why is it that black male creators seem to invent worlds where black women only come in one shade?
Certainly, black male filmmakers are not the first to reproduce the notion that light is right. We've known black men and women alike, that trade in dark skin for light skin as a form of upward mobility in a racist society. Retaining ones black maleness need not be compromised so long as said black male is offset by a light or non-black woman on his arm. Many, notable athletes and rappers embody this philosophy, consistently falling into this mold as if they're being paid to do it. It is an understandable defense mechanism, but ultimately it is self-destructive.
When black men deny the many faces of black women, they deny a piece of themselves. Depictions of black life that exclude or minimize the importance of black women reject the fullness of black life, instead offering up fragments of a much greater and more capacious experience.
These depictions devalue dark-skinned women by encouraging the belief that they are not loving, sensual, beautiful, or worse, that they don't really exist in black life at all. They also devalue light-skinned women, who hardly ever rise in the black man's imagination to anything beyond decoration, at worst, and as the preferred stand-in for all types of black women, at best. Ultimately, it is a raw expression of misogynoir. Women are valued or not valued primarily for their looks; and to be valuable, is to be light.
In her book on love between black people, All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks famously penned that "What we cannot imagine cannot come into being." If our creative endeavors are the fruits of our imaginations, what does it say for our community that black men cannot seem to imagine black life with varied and meaningful depictions of black women?
To be clear, the great risk here isn't that black women will never be represented in ways that honor our fullness and beauty. Black women and our allies are already making that happen in ways never before seen. No, the risk is that black men will remain suspended in creative infancy. Images of black men, by black men, regardless of their supposed politics, will continue to reveal pathological antiblackness. The risk is that straight black male creatives will never learn to accept their own fullness and, by extension, will remain unable to embrace and experience that of their female counterparts.
Black males creatives, and black men in general, must learn at some point that they can never truly ascend at the expense of black women. They must learn that their inability to engage with complex black womanhood arises from the racist ideology that deems their lives as disposable. Only then will their creations rise above aspirational black male supremacy.
