Olivia goes to Washington

I have recently become more than obsessed with a new ABC drama, now in its third season, which comes on afters Grey's Anatomy on Thursday nights called Scandal. Scandal follows main character, Olivia Pope - a high-profile, lawyer and ex- director of communications for the White House who now uses her brilliance, experience, charm and connections to fix problems for the elite in Washington DC out of her law firm, Olivia Pope and Associates. Olivia is determined, successful, stoic, and earned her rock solid reputation by succeeding in solving problems for her clients without exception.



As a powerful woman of color in the nation's most powerful city, Olivia has a high level of access compared to most people but especially compared to other people of color. The majority of her White House colleagues are white, though her law firm is more diverse in terms of race and gender. Her team is composed of two men of color and two white women, all with unique skill sets that allow them to be the best in the business.

It seems at first that Olivia has no problems of her own, until viewers find out that she is having an affair with the President. Olivia ran the president's campaign and allowed another member of his team to rig the election in order to win.

This plot complication has shock value simply for the fact that presidential affairs are shocking, but I believe this particular affair requires further analysis by viewers because of the gendered and racial tensions inherent in this relationship. It is also important to note that this show is written by Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey's Anatomy.

First is the question, is Olivia Pope allowed to be a professional black woman and have an affair with the President? Audiences are introduced to an independent, black, female professional, whose weakness is the President. Some may ask show creators why, when Olivia Pope is the only strong female and black lead on television would they make this decision. Many view it as potentially damaging to her character. Why is it that she couldn't just be the strong, independent black woman without doing something to mess it all up, especially when there are no depictions to the contrary.

While I think this is a fair question, I think it is important also that we do not allow the politics of respectability to dictate character's decisions. Olivia Pope is both a thriving professional and the president's lover. I think that writers do a fair job of exploring this contradiction and responding to the politics of respectability in the show.

 Throughout the show, Olivia repeats that she would have been able to get the president elected fairly if she hadn't fallen in love with him. Her internal dialogue highlights her self-confidence and awareness. She knows that she is the best and blames her one failure on having let her guard down for a man. I find this interesting because of the fact that men often limit opportunity for women by doing things like denying them promotions or asking them to give up work and take care of children. However it becomes more complicated here by acknowledging that men can take women's success even after they already have it. The show asks viewers to recognize that women have to take extra precaution with their work lives.

In a recent episode, Olivia's father engages and complicates this conversation after discovering the affair by reminding her that she has to be twice as good as other people to get half of what they have.

She understands the implications of her actions as one of the only women of color in such a high-powered position. And the show creators are aware of this as well. In this conversation they communicate the nuances of the black professional experience. This is a conversation I have had with my own mother.

I also want to look at the racial tensions in Olivia's relationship with the president. She tells him at one point that  their relationship is very, Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemmings. In other words, she serves to satisfy his jungle fever, while he is able to reap the power she in many ways handed to him. While the President is immediately insulted by this comparison, I think it is fair to say that a powerful white man sleeping with a black woman on the side is not exactly tolerable by the American public. Olivia's race is important in this relationship. Should their secret come out, her femaleness would not be the only aspect of her identity at play. Unspoken moral codes suggest that interracial relationships are inappropriate for the White House.

One last thing I question about Olivia Pope's character is, where are her black friends? Olivia Pope has two black friends in this show if you count her ex-fiance as one of them. From the age of twelve her father sent her to elite boarding schools meaning that she probably did not encounter many black people unless they could afford them. She worked hard to get to where she is, but is also privileged by her high socio-economic status. To me this suggests that in order to achieve financial and social success as a black person in America, you have to sacrifice your blackness.

We are all Renisha McBride

    On November 2nd, 2013 Renisha McBride's parents received the call no parent wants to receive. Their daughter had been killed in a shooting on the front porch of Paul Wafer, a resident of Dearborn Heights near Detroit, Michigan. Shortly before being in a single car accident, it is believed that Renisha left the scene disoriented and sought help on the Mr. Wafer's porch. When he believed she was there to break into his house, he shot the unarmed nineteen year old in the head with a shotgun.

    When police arrived, Mr. Wafer claimed that he accidentally fired the gun, that he was standing his ground by protecting himself. He was not arrested or charged until two weeks after Renisha's death. The incident immediately reminded the public, especially the black American public of Trayvon Martin and the many other unarmed black teens that have been killed for walking, talking and being in the wrong place while black.

     The rhetoric was very similar to what we heard after Trayvon Martin's death and after George Zimmerman's trial. However, I cannot help but notice the communal response seems very different than it was when we lost all the black young men before Renisha. There were no national rallies in the way that we saw for Trayvon Martin, though there were in Detroit. I wondered if this was perhaps due to the fact that after the damaging loss that allowed George Zimmerman to walk free, our community has in some ways given up the fight. Have we come to the point where we see yet another black child dead and feel no sense of urgency to do something because we know there is nothing we can do?


Or could this incidence be related to the gender of the victim?

     When the shooting first happened, I remember seeing a Facebook post by a friend that said something along the lines of, "Another black child dead. #canwetalkaboutourdaughtersnow"

     It really got me to think about the ways in which women have been shut out from the conversation of violence against the black community. After the verdict was read in the Zimmerman case, a Congressional hearing was called on the National state of young black boys and men in America. I was working on the hill when this happened and was happy to see something being done, but could not help but notice the way national rhetoric framed who this story was really about. It was not about black people, it was about black men. The message was not, protect our black children, it was, protect our black sons. Black men needed to be protected and they were not afraid to call on black women to do it.

I cannot recount the amount of times I saw articles with titles like this:

"The Talk: How parents raising black boys try to keep their sons safe" - Time Magazine

     What about our black daughters? What happens to them? Does our femaleness some how counteract the blackness that makes black men a threat? Are we somehow less dangerous or threatening than black men? I remember being a teenager and making white people uncomfortable, especially while with a group of friends. It was obvious they felt threatened even when no men were around. 

     Black women are called upon constantly to support black issues when the majority of the time the solutions to those issues are in the favor of black men. Black men want to talk about ending stereotypes that black men assault white women but never want to talk about how black men assault black women. They ask us to show up, to protect black men - to have talks with about protecting our sons and not to have those same talks with our daughters. 

     I think it is time we start having those conversations with our daughters too. Because if the death of Renisha McBride has taught us anything, it's that black women are a threat to white society. It is time we start asking black men to show up to the table. It is time for people to stop conflating blackness with maleness. 

Why is it so uncomfortable to think that we are all Renisha McBride?