Microaggressions in entertainment

“Ginny & Georgia” has been in the Top 10 on Netflix since its release on Feb. 24. It follows 15-year-old Virginia (Ginny) Miller and her mother, Georgia, as they settle down in a wealthy New England town following the death of Georgia’s husband. 

The show is addicting, giving off modern-day, more diverse “Gilmore Girls” vibes. The storylines surround topics such as self-harm, eating disorders, sexual identity and relationships, all in a very realistic way, sending the message that you don’t know what someone has gone through in their past or behind closed doors. 

Originally, I had no idea what the show was about and had no interest in watching it. What eventually drew me in was that Ginny is a biracial teenager growing up with a single, white mom. 

As a biracial, Black-identifying woman, any storyline following a biracial main character grabs my attention. While I was growing up, this plotline wasn’t common. I’m excited to see more representation in entertainment on what it feels like to grow up in, what I call, “the grey space” where you don’t truly fit into one racialized box. 

Some parts of the plot reinforced stereotypes that biracial people often feel, such as the “tragic mulatto” storyline, often used in Black literature to describe a mixed-race woman who doesn’t belong anywhere. While this is a very real feeling for a lot of mixed-race people, the show took it a little too far with the very first episode making it clear that Ginny always had been an outsider, and seemingly would always be one. The writers seemed to make her biracial identity the reason why she couldn’t fit in rather than her introverted personality and constant moving of schools, both of which have nothing to do with her race.

Along with this, when Ginny settles down in her new school with a group of mainly white friends, she faces a lot of microaggressions that are never addressed. One of her “friends,” Maxine, asks her if it is okay to touch her hair and then says something along the lines of “Oh wait, can I totally not do that because you’re Black?”

When I first heard this, I was stunned and assumed that it would eventually be addressed. But the episodes droned on, and more microaggressions came and went regarding Ginny’s racial identity. She continued to be friends with Maxine, as these microaggressions were a part of her “ditzy” trope. 

I know firsthand that it is extremely difficult to respond to microaggressions as a Black person, but no one on the show ever overtly addresses the issue with what some of the characters say regarding race. Maybe the point was to show how this is a big part of everyday life as a biracial person in a predominantly white space, but not using it as a learning tool was a deficit on the writers’ end. 

While I appreciated the biracial representation and related to Ginny more than I have to most TV characters, I felt the show would’ve been much better had it used Ginny’s biracial identity as a learning tool the way it did with the other serious topics. Instead, her race was often used as a joke or an attempted learning tool without the context needed to make it resourceful. 

Part of this could be due to the executive producer and writer being a white woman, who wouldn’t be able to understand the biracial and Black experience. “Ginny & Georgia” is an enjoyable show, but having so much of the content surrounding Ginny’s life as a biracial, Black teenager yet being written by a white woman is problematic. 

If the show is renewed for a second season, I’ll definitely watch it because I’m knee-deep in the drama of the show at this point. But, I hope to see more biracial representation and less stereotyping and microaggressions.