Thread by @mel_thegreat

Today was a day. Of course, I can't sleep. But I watched all of Pearson. It's a spin-off of Suits that features Gina Torres. In the show, as in real life, she's Afro-Latina.

This is a show you should put in your life. It's gripping, emotional and OTT.

But an episode happened and I couldn't help but feel, there's no way a Black person wrote this.

And it's hard to describe this kind of critique. You know it when you see it. You may extend a benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes from someone within.

So to explain, Pearson (Gina) has a family that refuses to take any kind of hand out. There's pride involved. There's also the need to reach back when you've done good or better.

Which is something I see all the time in the Black community.

There's a reason why we shun people who don't give props. Be it God or the ancestors i.e. people who came before to lay the groundwork.

We simply don't trust you if you act like you woke and succeeded. It's almost an unspoken ritual.

A lot of that is an understanding that our history is erased. It's something you can find with most marginalized people--the history is just as important as the paved present and the future.

It's the difference of a cishet man taking all the accolades of *his* achievement and feeling squishy when a cishet woman makes a speech that doesn't even touch on cishet women being silenced or the patriarchy.

But even within that context, there's a line.

In Pearson, a Black woman and the matriarch of the family willingly become homeless with two children to make a point.

This does not seem like a big deal. They are making a point. It's fiction. They even have the matriarch talking about how kids were getting sprayed with fire hoses during Civil Rights.

And this is correct. My baby is 20. My nephew was 24. They are kids.

But like all this ignores the very heart of Black culture, the Black community.

Even tho we educate the ugliness of the real world, we shield, we protect, we save.

There's no way a Black grandma would allow two kids under 12 to live on the streets.

19, maybe.

But under 12?

As a community, we know how little they are allowed to be children. There ain't no way.

So with this kind of storyline, I know no one Black wrote it. Or approved it.

We know how much the world is anti-Black. There is no refuge in another country. You are Black in any country you go to.

Despite what Joe Biden has said, we turn on the music or anything that will make our children feel like children.

We protect those moments.

For real, I can just think about how I never grew up with a super soaker. There were times, sure, where my parents couldn't afford one. But there were many moments where they could. Yet, they knew a gun, just a water gun, in any way would shatter my childhood.

I didn't understand until I had my own kids.

We are not dragging our kids into the fight for humanity.

We are letting them know the fight exists.

But we are not dragging them into it. We want our kids to be kids.

So I call utter bullshit with Pearson.

I call bullshit with any show that writes Black kids through a lens of whiteness.

Ain't no fucking way. Do better.

Honestly, I just feel like networks and publishers want to go the shortcut way. They would rather hire someone white. And I'll give them some kind of recognition for hiring someone white who actually listens and internalizes the truth of our existence.

But you are never going to be an expert like someone who has actually lived the existence you're writing about. This critique comes from anti-Blackness, but it covers all manners of sins.

I can write what it means to find love as a Black cishet woman w/hoteps on every corner.

I can write it from a Black trans woman POV but never in a way that a Black trans woman can.

So, moral of the story, hire a diverse writing team. Stay in your lane.

Write no harm.

WRITE NO HARM.