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The Radical Importance Of Issa Rae’s ‘Insecure’

Insecure

Black Women in Education

The Radical Importance Of Issa Rae’s ‘Insecure’

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On Sunday night, during the second season premiere of “Insecure” on HBO, we watched 30 hilarious minutes in the life of a deeply melanated, kinky-haired, black woman named Issa. We did not watch her blackness played out as some sort of gimmick. Instead, we watched her in agonize over a bad breakup, have a bad day at work, be petty despite her better judgment, and have an awkward and confusing run-in with her ex.

We watched her, in other words, be a regular, flawed, human being

It’s hard to believe that, five years ago, Olivia Pope was the most exciting black female lead on TV. There is, of course, a place for the Olivia Popes and Annaliese Keatings of the television world. These characters are important. But before “Insecure,” there were no prime time shows that so vividly depicted the black, female, millennial experience. At least, not ones that mattered.

The fact that “Insecure” follows not one but two dark-skinned black female leads (the second, Molly, played by Yvonne Orji) with real storylines is doubly exciting. Perhaps not since sitcoms like “Living Single,” or “Girlfriends” has a half-hour comedy offered up these kinds of shades and textures of black womanhood.

In a perfect world, none of this would be cause for so much celebration, or provide so much fodder for think pieces. But the fact that “Insecure” is the first time that a character like Issa has stood at the center of a narrative on primetime TV makes her rarity and her brilliance worth pointing out.

It’s an idea that isn’t lost on Rae, who created and executive produces the show. As she told HuffPost Black Voices senior editor Lilly Workneh last year: “Black people don’t really get a chance to be regular, boring, and go through everyday things. But this is very much a slice of life show.”

As much as a catalyst in the ever continuing Hollywood diversity conversation as Olivia Pope was, her emergence at just around the same time as the debut of HBO’s “Girls” and Comedy Central’s “Broad City” highlighted a deep television void: When was the last time we got to see a young black woman on television come of age, be messy, make mistakes, kick back with her other black girlfriends, have unapologetic drunken sex, fight, and make up?

The problem wasn’t that television was missing a “black version of Girls,” or that to rectify the situation there needed to be a direct equivalent to the dozens of shows that explored the free, white and 20-something female experience, but that featured black women.

The real issue was that, like always, the industry was incredibly slow to realize, to even consider, that representations of black women on television can also span age and socio-economic status, that the genre doesn’t always have to be a hard-hitting work drama, that black women do in fact have coming-of-age stories worth telling. Web series like “An …

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I am a future butterfly at the stage of growth when I am turning into an adult. I am enclosed in a hard case shell formed by love, family, and friends. It is the hardest stage of becoming a black butterfly. You will encounter many hardships only to come out stronger and better than what you went in. At this stage, you are finding out who you truly are and how to love yourself.

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