I'm not watching the world cup for reasons. But I don't want to talk about soccer. I want to talk about racism and erasure in major TV shows.
Shows set in New York City like "Sex and the City," "Girls," and "Friends," show an NYC almost exclusively populated by white folk. But real NYC doesn't look like that. 1 in 20 Black US citizens lives in NYC🤷🏿♂️
And American made shows like "Emily in Paris," show almost no Black folk in Paris. But:
The state of California is about 40 million people, around 5% of whom are Black.
France is about 67 million people, 4% to 7% of whom are Black.
France is Blacker than California, and there are more Black people living in France than in California.
Some folks including the show's creator, say things like, "But Emily in Paris is escapist fantasy! We want it to be glamorous!" Which makes me wonder, "🤔What are you escaping from?" And "Black people can't be glamorous?"
Here's the silliest part:
Way more than half of the "Emily in Paris" US audience would have absolutely no problem if there were more Black Parisian extras, or Black women with speaking lines.♥️👍🏿 And Black viewers would see themselves more represented. They would make *more* money.
If you're hiring extras for a crowd in Paris, and you want it to be almost all white, you have to intentionally filter out Black and Arabic actors. It's more work, to make less money🙂🙃
@rachel_elson @mekkaokereke The Eddy was great. Lupin also features a racially diverse Paris, and uses upper society's anti-black bias in the plot without being specifically about race.
But interesting how both these shows were made for Netflix' French audiences first, while Emily is clearly a fantasy travelogue made for Americans, playing to all the stereotypes.
@lkanies @being @AmeliaBR @rachel_elson @mekkaokereke
I have just watched the first episode of "Standing Up" (Drôle), starring black French actress Mariama Gueye https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariama_Gueye and Younês Boucif, it takes place in a comedy club in Paris. Let me know what you think of it, if you watch it!
@rafa_font @lkanies @being @AmeliaBR @rachel_elson Added to queue!
The best part about this conversation is all of the great French TV show recommendations! ♥️👍🏿
@mekkaokereke I'm trying to imagine an all-white Paris and it's just strange.
Lupin was a huge success, showed a pretty accurate (if excessively pretty, which is a general showbiz problem) Parisian population, AND also showed the casual racism they have there.
@mekkaokereke
I just watched the pilot of Astrid, a French (with English subtitles) police procedural featuring an autistic main character. While the main characters are two white women (the autist and a cop), the cop's boss is black, and there are other black characters sprinkled throughout.
Don't know if it makes a difference that it's a French show rather than American (I don't think France is substantially less racist than the US), but thought I'd mention it.
@smpaley Unfortunately every country on earth is substantially less racist than the US. Just on mass incarceration and civil asset forfeiture alone, we distance every other nation by a lot. 🤷🏿♂️
* Black folk don't do more drugs than white folk
* But ~1 in 4 Black US citizens will be locked up at some point in their lives, mostly for weed.
* Slavery is legal once incarcerated
* Civil asset forfeiture is cops just taking money from innocent Black folk
@smpaley If you're poor and Black and stopped by police, the cops can just take your money without you being convicted of a crime. This happens mostly to poor Black people.
The sum amount of property taken in civil asset forfeiture, exceeds the amount taken in all other burglaries in the US in a given year combined.
No other country comes close to this level of racist barbarity on this scale. We haven't even talked about education or voting yet.
@smpaley
For sure. But being called the N word, or having to look at golliwog dolls or chocolate hands, pales in comparison to a 1 in 4 chance of incarceration, 1 in 1000 chance of being killed by a cop, civil asset forfeiture, and denial of access to education, loans, voting, housing, healthcare, etc, that the US has.
Structural racism baked into the laws and systems of a country, is worse and more dangerous than racist individuals.
@mekkaokereke I guess I just want to say don't let the fact that things are structurally awful here blind you to the way things are differently awful elsewhere. I grew up in Australia, and my cousin works w/ the indigenous population there, who also suffer horribly from structural racism (less visible because we wiped most of them out, so it affects fewer people).
Obviously we need to focus on the problems here where we are, but don't sugarcoat the rest of the world.
@smpaley I'm very happy that you did bring up the show Astrid! Now I'm trying to find it to add it to the queue!
And I do think it's very interesting that French produced shows about France acknowledge Black and brown people in Paris, but US produced shows about France are impossibly white. It's similar to how Hollywood producers still claim that international audiences won't accept Black action stars, but the data repeatedly came shows the opposite.
In France, since 2005, the treatment of Black, Arab and Muslim populations has grown increasingly controversial. Politicians and the media have framed debates about national identity, immigration, religious freedom, racism and discrimination within the context "Republican Values". The most prominent are liberty, equality, fraternity (brotherhood), laïcité and gender equality (feminism). How are these values understood by different actors in the French political spheres? How do Blacks, Arabs and Muslims understand and use these concepts to fight against discrimination?
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