What Do You Think? Wednesday
Yesterday I took a break. I didn’t educate the children or cook and I talked a long time to one of my best girlfriends. I decided to just do it, after thinking about it and then my son asking if he could have the day off. I’m so glad I did. I didn’t know my mom would have a friend come pick her up to get out of the house so I didn’t have to see that she got her lunch, dinner or early evening medication. Apart from leading a counseling session with my husband and getting the boys from the sitter’s, I had a day off. Days like this don’t come easily. We have to just take them sometimes, especially as recovering strong black women.
As recovering strong black women, people still don’t often expect that we need a break or that we need anything, sometimes including a mad love affair. Of course, as a Bible-believing Christian that doesn’t believe in fornication or adultery, I am speaking of the sexual fidelity kind. I’m speaking of a love where attraction is mutual, one of mind and heart, simple and complex sacrifices and quiet enjoyment, just sitting. This seems to be the type of love, except for the post-marital consummation part, that Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant have on the new ABC hit drama Scandal. For those of you who didn’t watch Scandal, whose season finale was last week, I can tell you this not-so-secret aspect of the show: Pope (played by Kerry Washington), a smart, compassionate and politically savvy black woman who is a “fixer,” is having an affair with Grant (played by Tony Goldwyn), the idealistic married white male president of the United States and a philanderer. Though her passion is deep, Pope (whose character is based on the real life Judy Smith*, who is a fixer A.K.A. a crisis management expert) knows that abandoning the notion of a happy-ever-after life with the president is the best fix for the nation, for the free world and, by extension, for her. So, as a good fixer does, she abandons her desire and saves the day for all.
This show is well-written with complex characters and storylines so it’s hard for me to easily place Pope into traditional black women stereotypes as easily as the writer who compared Pope to Thomas Jefferson’s widely believed black slave mistress Sally Hemmings. Pope—the go-to woman—is smart, savvy, tough, compassionate, pretty and a sharp dresser with class, though that class is compromised with her adulterous affair. But her affair and her crying after making a rule for her staff not to cry are two of the main reasons that I like her; these weaknesses (for a lack of a better term because I think crying is a human’s most cathartic weapon) show she is real, can be real outside of Thursday nights on ABC. For her realness, displaying a gamut of emotions, strengths and weaknesses, I believe, for the most part, Pope transcends the stereotypes and offers a character to which many recovering strong black women, or any go-to women, can relate.
Though Pope is well put together, she still has love she can’t pursue. She’s no asexual mammy, snap-back-atcha sapphire or sleezy jezebel, but she is a career successful woman without a love to call her own. This is no stereotype but is the reality of many successful black women and another aspect that makes Pope’s character real. Some may look at race—that of Pope’s and Grant’s—and slap on the stereotypes, but I’m giving the Scandal writers what I gave myself yesterday—a break. Perhaps Pope’s end will be different from her beginning. The writers will determine that and they just may steer Pope further away from age-old stereotypes. The writer of my life—God Himself—created my story where I have been released from manmade bondages. I just have to follow His script (Ephesians 2:4-5, 10, Jeremiah 29:11).
Whether you watched Scandal or not, please tell me what you think.
*Note: Judy Smith didn’t have an affair with a US President.
