The Mary Sue: The other day, after I binge-watched my all-time favorite television show, One Tree Hill, for the 20th time, something hit me. Out of the nine seasons and 187 episodes, there was only one episode where a Black woman was present—only one. This made me begin to reexamine all of the teen dramas that I have watched over the course my life, realizing that they all have the same pattern of leaving Black women out. They are invisible and underrepresented in this massive genre.
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This is a question I have been wondering more and more as I've gotten older and become more aware of this lack of representation. For so many adolescents, my teenage self included, teen dramas are the trashy backbone of our development. I learned so much from secretly watching Degrassi and Secret Life of the American Teenager as a teen that impacted how I saw growing up and relationships. As I've started watching teen dramas as a young adult now, primarily Riverdale and Gossip Girl, this question of "where are the black female characters?" has been on the forefront of my mind. Not only that, but where are any characters of diversity on these shows. While more recent TV shows have had more diverse casts, Riverdale for example, the show primary journey always centers around a white, able-bodied, heterosexual, upper-middle class couple and/or friend group. It's not to say that these are bad stories to tell, but when they are exclusively the stories that are told, we isolate and exclude anyone who does not fall into that compartmentalization. It is paramount to our industry to start telling stories of diverse relationships between friends, crushes, vampires, or whatever teen dramas will center on next, because they stories we tell to our 12-20 yr olds are the precedents we are setting for our immediate future.
When I began to read this article my first thought was that this reminds me of Riverdale, so I wasn't surprised to see it at the end of this article. Although the creators made the decision to cast Josie and her family with Black actors they still kept the core group that the story really revolves around completely white. Especially in a show that deviates from its source material constantly it does not seem justified to me keep all of the main characters white. It seems like many TV shows think that it is enough to simply have Black women play side characters without any real sort of depth. I haven't seen many of the shows that this article discussed such as Secret Life of the American Teenager or 90210, but I imagine that they fall into the same pattern. This trope is even true outside of teen dramas with sitcoms being another type of TV show that does this all the time, with shows such as Friends, Full House, and Seinfeld all focusing on a white primary cast.
This article is especially personal for me because I grew up watching some of these teen dramas and not seeing any black female characters stood out to me. The author of this article is very harsh in their picking and analyzation of each show. I don’t agree with the fact of just putting a black female in a show for the fear of a show not being socially accepted. I think a black character should be there because the character helps the story flow and adds more depth. In the 1990s and early 2000s, there were SO many shows I grew up watching that included the struggles of what black teens and black families go through. A prime example is Lincoln Heights, which is a show with a black female teen as the main character. It aired around the same time as shows like One Tree Hill and it was a huge success. I will agree that black families aren’t as represented in the mainstream as their white counterparts and that is a big problem TV producers have, but society is growing more inclusive as the days go on. With big hit shows like Black-ish, the everyday lives of a black family is becoming more normal to watch for every person.
I have watched pretty much every teen drama that there is from the past 20 years and while I love some good high school scandals as I grew up the shocking diversity problem in these types of shows became more clear to me. When there was a person of color on these shows they were almost always the best friend, funny for men, and sassy for women. These actors were completely pigeon hole into one type of character. You ca look through Gabrielle Union's entire career and see like two types of black women that she plays in all her moves from the 90's and the 2000's. I hope that we are moving to a more inclusive place but as Megan said above, even current shows like Riverdale have a clear problem with how they are approaching diversity and in deciding how much diversity is enough.
Admittedly, teen dramas are usually not my style, so I have not seen any of the ones mentioned in this article. However, I do not think the lack of women of color in television is limited to the genre. While it may be more pronounced in teen dramas, and while there are certainly a few shows that are very good about representation (of women of color as well as other groups), many shows I have watched seem to completely fail to include or develop characters who are women of color. Notable exceptions include two of my favorite shows: Person of Interest and How to Get Away with Murder, which both feature several women of color as main characters with developed and relatable backstories. How to Get Away with Murder especially does well to explore issues of race, gender, sexuality, and power without making characters of color one-dimensional, as is so often the case with both characters of color and queer characters.
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