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🙂🙃

@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
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.