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The state of the world depressed me so much yesterday that I spent the day binging a Netflix series called Love Life.
Love Life starts out with that age-old addage that everybody is looking for their perfect soul mate and proceeds from there into the quaint rituals of Millennial couplings, spread out over 10 half-hour episodes. The show got canceled after two seasons.
There were things about the show I really liked and things about it that irritated the hell out of me. Among the things that irritated me—
The second season focuses on the romantic misadventures of a young Black male protagonist.
When he meets the woman of his dreams, she tells him, "Honestly, I just can't dance in a room full of white people. They make me feel like I'm on display."
And the couple flirts by googling "ugly white babies."
###
Now!
If you showed a white couple flirting by googling "ugly black babies," you'd be portraying ignorant racist creeps. There would be no cute, ironic subtext to it.
But this Black couple, we're given to understand, is hip & adorable.
This kind of double standard is absolutely fucked.
Either nobody should be allowed to make these kinds of racially motivated digs or everybody should be allowed to make these kinds of racially motivated digs.
Love Life starts out with that age-old addage that everybody is looking for their perfect soul mate and proceeds from there into the quaint rituals of Millennial couplings, spread out over 10 half-hour episodes. The show got canceled after two seasons.
There were things about the show I really liked and things about it that irritated the hell out of me. Among the things that irritated me—
The second season focuses on the romantic misadventures of a young Black male protagonist.
When he meets the woman of his dreams, she tells him, "Honestly, I just can't dance in a room full of white people. They make me feel like I'm on display."
And the couple flirts by googling "ugly white babies."
###
Now!
If you showed a white couple flirting by googling "ugly black babies," you'd be portraying ignorant racist creeps. There would be no cute, ironic subtext to it.
But this Black couple, we're given to understand, is hip & adorable.
This kind of double standard is absolutely fucked.
Either nobody should be allowed to make these kinds of racially motivated digs or everybody should be allowed to make these kinds of racially motivated digs.
