Episode 7 of Queen’s Gambit: the mammy returns.

If diverse casting means that the white hero gets a mammy, you can keep the diversity.

Because also the writing ... her dialogue? It’s low rent. Racism makes people stupid.
“You’re like, my guardian angel.”

Might as well have just written “mammy,” dude
“I’m not here to save you. I’m here because you need me to be here. It’s what family does.”

Ok but this girl was adopted and making money and never even came looking for you even though there’s reason to believe you would have needed it
If this dude’s life depended on writing Black women well, he would be so fucked
My feelings about the writing of Jolene notwithstanding ... I started studying the chess community 14 years ago because it’s so similar to STEM in its gender and racial dynamics, and I think it’s ok that The Queen’s Gambit gave us a fantasy of a different world. https://twitter.com/ibjiyongi/status/1323787948672909314
I don’t think that every film about women doing things has to be a horror show of white supremacist patriarchal reality, and in 2020 we could all use an escape from the extremes of ... that reality’s persistent newsworthiness.
What matters is our willingness to tell the truth about what would have really happened to Beth. That she would have been sexually harassed, probably assaulted, and never had a chance. But what the show does is important:
The Queen’s Gambit gives us a vision of what we can accomplish when people are helpful instead of being patriarchal monsters &!foot soldiers. It is incomplete in its whiteness but even so:

What a start for a vision.

We long for the world where Beth and Jolene rise, unimpeded.
There are a bunch of people who deserve a shout out for working toward that but I want to especially highly Woman Grandmaster @JenShahade who has been clear about TQG’s problems but has spent decades dragging chess out of the dark ages and not just for white women ✊🏽
She has also organized for women members of US Chess to get free beginner chess lessons from a woman chess master: https://new.uschess.org/news/us-chess-offer-womens-beginners-classes-taught-nm-laura-smith
You can follow @IBJIYONGI.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: