I Can’t Overlook Donald Glover’s Misogynoir Anymore – Thoughts on Atlanta Season 3 and That Odd Self-Interview
So before I get into this, let me just acknowledge that it has been a minute since I published anything here. I’ve been working consistently as a freelance journalist and am graduating next month, so life happens. It’s all good stuff though, so yay.
Moving on, I’ve been writing episode recaps of Atlanta season 3 for SlashFilm.com (great site, great writers, btw), and so my naturally analytical nature has been put to good use. I was initially really excited, because part of the job entails watching and reviewing new episodes of Atlanta before they air, and since the show was on a 4-year long hiatus, I was eager to dive back in as soon as possible. My excitement has turned to cautious optimism, but after watching episode 4, entitled “The Big Payback,” I’m not sure I would continue watching the show at this point if I wasn’t being paid to.
My issue with the show lies in the lack of depth, nuance, or positive traits in most of the show’s Black women characters. Perhaps the most egregious example is in the episode “Champage Papi” from season 2, in which Van’s group of Black gal pals are portrayed as vapid, clout-chasing, Drake obsessed Instagram model wannabes. There’s also the scene in which one of the girls goes off on some Black guy’s white girlfriend after being hung up on that particular interracial relationship the whole episode. She’s loud, aggressive, and can’t be reasoned with, bucking her eyes and calling the white girl a bitch.
That’s pretty much how all of the Black women are in Atlanta’s tv show universe, with the only exception being Van – who is lightskinned, half-Black, and mostly treated like shit by Earn throughout their romantic and coparenting relationship. Her being half-Black and the only Black girl lead on the show reeks of colorism and misogynoir, and even with this apparent advantage, she gets significantly less screen time and character development than her male counterparts.
In addition to “Champage Papi,” there’s the episode “Woods” in which Al (Paper Boi) is dating a Black influencer named Sierra. Sierra is obsessed with money and image, and portrayed as aggressive and inconsiderate regarding Al’s reluctance to be on social media. She also says she doesn’t even want a real relationship, but would like an arrangement as a sort of superficial power couple so that they can take advantage of each other’s celebrity. In the season 2 episode “FUBU,” Earn’s childhood crush is a young Black girl who says she “doesn’t like broke niggas.” Do you see the problem? If you don’t, which I find hard to believe, the issue is that the show routinely reinforces negative stereotypes about Black women and girls. We don’t get to be quirky and weird like Darius, or reserved and “educated” like Earn (unless we’re only half Black, I guess). Even though we are, like any other group of people, unique and interesting individuals with a range of personality traits and interests and goals, Atlanta continues to portray Black women as loud, aggressive, angry, and obsessed with wealth and status.
Despite these issues, I went into season 3 with hopes that things would improve. Four episodes in, they really haven’t. The first warning sign was the characterization of the Black mother in the series premiere, “Three Slaps.” She is dismissive, abrasive, and punishes her son by kicking him out of the house after a misguided (racist) white guidance counselor calls social services, prompting a visit from police officers and a social worker. The episode makes an attempt to justify her yelling in her son’s face and forcing him to dance as punishment, but as I pointed out in my recap, we don’t get any sign that she regrets kicking her young child out of the house. She doesn’t embrace him, she doesn’t even ask where he’s been. It’s weird. It’s offensive. I tried to write it off as the episode justifying “tough love” in a world that is dangerous and unforgiving for Black people, but now I’m not so sure.
By season 3 episode 4, we’re met with another Black woman side character who is yet another stereotype. Her name is Shaniqua, and she’s loud, obnoxious, and invasive. It’s all quite problematic, to say the least. Like in “Three Slaps,” the episode makes a half-assed attempt to somewhat justify her behavior, but it’s not a very good one. We get a brief few seconds of her being a happy mother, and that’s it. We don’t get to see another side of her, and we don’t get to see her perspective. She’s yet another example of the show invoking the Sassy Black Woman stereotype and offering nothing more. It’s as lazy as it is exhausting, and I can’t help thinking that maybe Donald Glover’s past issues with internalized anti-blackness and misogynoir aren’t really “past” at all. It’s his show, so I can only assume this is how he sees Black women – unless they’re light skinned or only half Black, like Van. It’s disheartening and impossible to ignore at this point.
Like any millennial writer with access to social media, I went to Twitter to vent my frustrations about how the show routinely depicts negative stereotypes of Black women without even bothering to unpack or examine them.
Not too long after I shared these tweets, wouldn’t you know it, Donald Glover’s bizarre Interview Magazine interview drops. In it, he interviews himself, so it’s not much of an interview at all – more of a glorified personal essay. It’s pretentious, but that’s not the point here. The point is that, among the other self-imposed inquiries in the interview, he makes a point to ask himself if he’s “afraid” of Black women, and proceeds to dodge the question. The question he asked himself. It’s madness.
To anyone who has been following Glover’s come up, it’s no secret that the comedian, actor, and musician has displayed some troubling acts of anti-blackness in the past, especially where Black women are concerned. A 2018 Washington Post article details some of the criticism he’s faced for this, and the fact that he’s never really addressed it. I guess I, like many of us, was eager to just assume the best and hope that he’d done some soul searching and unpacking concerning his anti-black misogyny, creepy Asian fetishism, and so on, but that seems to have been a mistake. Unlike Glover, I can fully acknowledge and address such mistakes. I know better now – Glover sees most of us, the darkest of us, as bitter, angry, money hungry aggressors with a chip on our shoulders. To him, we don’t have personalities beyond this.
He thinks people are angry about his interracial relationship when the reality is that he’s said a lot of really weird shit about Black women to justify his equally fucked up fetishism of Asian women. Take, for instance, the lyrics in the song “Kids Keep Up,” in which he states that he prefers Asian women because Black girls are…too political?
You made a mistake
Childish Gambino/Donald Glover – Kids Keep Up
These dudes, man, you bathing in apes
Finding you is like finding Asians I hate
But they say I got a fetish, nah, I’m skipping all of it
Black or white girls come with a set of politics
That’s all I was saying
In both cases, whether he’s justifying his aversion to Black women as romantic partners or singing offensive “praises” of Asian women as apolitical happy mediums between Black and white, women are dehumanized. People aren’t wrong for calling it out, and maybe it’d be a good idea to finally address it without pretense. Personally, I don’t give a fuck who another consenting adult dates, but I do find it weird that so many Black men enjoy putting down Black women in order to prop up non-Black women. Just love who you want without turning it into an excuse to bash Black women, and perhaps examine why you feel so comfortable singing about your racial fetishes?
Speaking of his Asian fetish, which he has rapped about extensively in the past, season 3, episode 3 of Atlanta features an exchange between an Asian woman named MK, and Darius – a Black male character. Darius approaches MK, who immediately says “no, thank you” because she assumes that he, as a Black man, must be approaching her in pursuit of a romance or sex. Instead, he explains he just wanted to access the alcohol on the counter behind her. She apologizes, embarrassed, and states that she’s just used to Black men approaching her because “Black men love Asian women.” Darius responds by saying it’s a good cultural exchange because Asians love hiphop and Black people love anime – even though there’s no indication that MK is Japanese, and anime is literally short for Japanese animation. There’s also the fact that he shrugs off and even justifies her racist assumption. To me, it just feels as though this is yet another indicator of Glover’s more problematic beliefs about women coming out in his work. No, he isn’t the lone writer for the show, but it’s his fucking show. There’s also only one Black woman in the Atlanta writer’s room, so make of that what you will.
I guess I’m just disappointed. I mostly liked Atlanta. I also wanted to like Glover, despite the weird, questionable shit in his past, but I don’t think I can make excuses for any of it anymore. His unwillingness to actually confront the apparent misogynoir in the history of his work coupled with Atlanta’s notable lack of unambiguously Black women who aren’t presented as money hungry, sassy stereotypes just doesn’t sit right with me. I’m all for forgiving and moving forward when people are legitimately sorry and working to do better, but everything about Glover’s latest stunt and season 3 of Atlanta leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe he is “afraid” of Black women. Prompted by his own tweet, in which he asked people to @ him directly with criticism, I did.
If the fact that he failed to answer his own question about his alleged fear of Black women is any indication, I don’t think he’ll respond. Boo, nigga.
DeLa Doll is a culture writer, cosplayer, and artist based in Florida. She has been writing professionally since 2016, with some of her work being featured on sites like HuffPo and /Film. She is an advocate for meaningful diversity and representation in media, a gamer, a mom, and an avid user of DIY hair dye.
