Roseanne cancellation shows what happens when we push back against White Privilege. [View all]

[EffieBlack]

Last edited Tue May 29, 2018, 05:37 PM - Edit history (1)

Roseanne got away with an awful lot over the past few years. And it is hard to dispute the fact that her white privilege allowed her to do so. And make no mistake, Roseanne has been living off of white privilege for decades. No person of color could pull the crap and say the things she has and be handed another golden opportunity like their very own show on a major network, huge ratings and loving kudos from the president of the United States.

But here's the thing. Roseanne thought her privilege entitled her to behave, in public, like a defiant, obnoxious bigoted ass. And maybe that was true until very recently.

But diversity happened and she wasn't paying any attention.

One of the wonderful things about diversity, isn't just that it ensures greater opportunity and fairness and allows people to interact with people who don't like them, but that it creates an environment that makes the kind of behavior Roseanne exhibited less tolerable and even less tolerated.

Very early in my career, I was confronted with a situation that I found intolerable and decided that I was going to speak up and make a stand. One of my mentors, a very wise older black man, told me that would be a mistake. He counseled me that I had not been in my position long enough for any of my bosses to give two hoots about whether I was pissed off and they really wouldn't care if I walked away - they'd just write me off as a trouble-making non-team player and replace me with someone else and not think any more about it. Instead, he said, "You have to stick around, put up with this crap until you've worked hard enough and been there long enough that you getting mad and walking away would hurt their bottom line. in the meantime, you just suck it up." I told him that wasn't fair. Why do I have to put up with being insulted this way. "Life's not fair, kiddo. You're black. Things are going to be harder for you. Get used to it."

This situation calls that to mind. A few years ago, Roseanne might have gotten away with it. But not today. She just learned the hard way that she's not the only big dog at ABC. There are other people there with lots of clout. People who don't look like her. People who don't like her crap and aren't going to put up with it. People who had enough pull and make the network enough money that when they put their feet down, the network has no option but to listen.

People like Wanda Sykes who walked away this morning and, in so doing, probably scared a whole lot of people up in the C-suite. People like Shonda Rhimes - ABC's big moneymaker - who I am SURE had at least one, in-depth, "oh, HELL no" conversation with someone very high up in the ABC hierarchy this mornig. Someone who would be absolutely terrified (and probably jobless) if they pissed off Shonda Rhimes so much that she walked away.

And, maybe sweetest of all - the ABC exec who made the announcement of Roseanne's cancellation (and likely was involved in the decision to do it) was Channing Dungey, African-American woman and, more important, as president of ABC Entertainment, Roseanne's BOSS.

Roseanne got so caught up in her Trumpland world that it didn't occur to her that this was possible. She thought she could say what she wanted and that ABC wasn't going to fight her because, you know, number 1 tv show and all.

Roseanne thought she could get away with it, but, as my mother would say, she thought like Nit. (Don't ask me what that means, but you get my drift).

A racist tv star whose big mouth got her show cancelled isn't going to change the world. But it does give the world a good look at how things work when white privilege gets trumped by a little bit of black power