i’m seeing a lot of people say that lena waithe needs therapy — which is probably true because who doesn’t — but i think the simplest (and truest) answer is that white people like her violent ass writing.

jordan peele makes white people uncomfortable because his work is an indictment of the placid liberalism they traffic in. his work is a critique of whiteness and an acknowledgement of how white people are socialised to terrorise everyone else.

lena waithe specialises in magical negro tropes and respectability politics — which makes white people feel good about the latent racism they indulge in and the stereotypes they hold close.

but lena waithe’s greatest appeal is that anti-blackness is global and she, a black woman, in revelling in it. she puts anti-black tropes and beliefs on screen with a thin veneer of “social critique” or whatever so everyone else can laugh with (at) her.

i don’t think her appeal is any deeper than the global fascination with gawking at black trauma and pain while pointing and saying “you could have avoided this if you had just fallen in line.”

Q+S is quite literally a narrative of what happens to uppity negroes as soon as they stop toeing the line of respectability. she made countless excuses for the abuse that happened on her set. i will not be watching her newest show because i imagine it’s much more of the same.

i will not be pitching this because i refuse to think about her or her body of dubious work beyond this thread.