Race in Shondaland

ABC Television's Thursday prime time slots are filled by “Grey’s Anatomy,” “How to Get Away with Murder,” and “Scandal.” What do these shows all have in common besides high ratings? Shonda Rhimes.

Rhimes is the executive producer of “How to Get Away with Murder” and the creator of “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” All three of these shows have female leads. Two of these leads are African American.  Before the premiere of “Scandal” in 2012, the last network drama to have a black female lead was “Get Christie Love!” which ran from 1974-1975. An article in The New Yorker states that in “Scandal,” the main character “Olivia Pope’s ethnicity is a non-issue; the show never refers to it. This places ‘Scandal’ in contrast to ‘The Good Wife,’ another network procedural, but one that is set in an Obama-haunted Chicago, and quite explicit about racial politics, as well as about institutional racism and white guilt.”

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Shonda Rhimes graces the cover of this month's issue of The Hollywood Reporter.  In the interview with Rhimes in that issue it becomes clear that she doesn’t want to focus on race in her personal career any more than she does in her television shows.

            “Shonda Rhimes read a draft announcement for an event where she was set to appear. It called her ‘the most powerful black female showrunner in Hollywood.’ She crossed out ‘female’ and ‘black’ and sent it back… ‘They wouldn’t say that someone is the most powerful white male showrunner in Hollywood… I find race and gender to be terribly important; they’re terribly important to who I am. But there’s something about the need for everybody else to spend time talking about it… that pisses me off.”

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 Kerry Washington, the star of "Scandal," has a different approach to the topic of race. In an interview with The Guardian Washington says:

“I don’t believe in post-racial. It’s like saying we should live in a post-gender world. But I love being a woman! I am interested in living in a post-sexist world and feel the same about race. I don’t want to live in a post-race world because being black is really exciting… it’s who I am… I’m interested in living in a post-racist world, where being African American doesn’t dictate limitations on what I can do, but I don’t want to live post-race. Our differences are so fascinating and wonderful. We don’t want to all be the same. Who wants that?”

Now that I have ignored Ms. Rhimes' desires and focused on the topic of race in her work, I'm going to step back and take a little look at Shondaland (the name of Rhimes' television empire) by the numbers. The season premieres of "Scandal" and "How to Get Away with Murder" dominated all other non-sports television in the ratings on Thursday night.  "Scandal" drew 11.9 million viewers and "How to Get Away with Murder" debuted to 14 million viewers. Race may still be a hot topic and racism an ever present issue, but Shonda Rhimes' television shows have proven that good character development, exciting story lines, and excellent acting are more important to a show's success than the gender and color of its star.