"And I love The Wire, but blindness follows blindness. Leave aside black screenwriters like John Ridley, Barry Jenkins and Ava DuVernay—Neal Brennan does not know who the best black screenwriter is because the best black screenwriter right now is waitressing tables, counting up shit tips, thinking about her babysitting shift that night, hoping to get her car out the shop tomorrow, and storing lines of dialogue and character notes in her memory chalet. Neal Brennan can not know who "the best black" anything is, because the best black anythings are shot, jailed and destroyed at discomfiting rates. And there were so few black people in Wilmette. And these facts, and Brennan's blindness, and Brennan's declaration offered in blindness, are not wholly unconnected."


He was generally killing it and making good points in the piece this comes from but the argument above, the best black screenwriters never get the chance to write, is pretty bad. There are better arguments like "How the fuck would NB know which writers most authentically and honestly depicts Black Folks"?

But yeah, he generally nails the point that NB is guilty of being one of those white people who freely makes whatever declarations they please about worlds they knew very little about based on his limited exposure.


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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

http://blackpeopleonlocalnews.tumblr.com/