Urges to play in Black people’s faces are about to rise to an all-time high now that you know who is smelling up the White House again––the petty and ridiculous mandate to remove the Black Lives Matter mural in D.C., another sign of the cultural shifts underway. While it’s been disappointing and shocking to see supposedly stalwart institutions like news organizations caving to pressure, and private businesses go limp on DEI while taking Black dollars, it’s Hollywood’s about-face that might be most surprising. 

This didn’t just start. By 2023, almost all the executives TV studios and streamers hired after the protests of 2020 were out of their jobs. Specific reasons at each individual company vary but the net effect was the same; it was almost as if––clutch pearls––all those promises to “listen and engage” and “do better” and “truly represent all audiences” were performative. Now, two years later with a (questionably enforceable) mandate to make DEI DOA, Hollywood seems to be putting up zero fight for diversity and inclusion as nearly all streamers and studios have followed orders. As a recent story in The Hollywood Reporter notes, this translates to an uncertain future for programs specifically designed to attract minority talent in front of and behind the camera. And while some executives are quietly continuing commitments to inclusion and simply appeasing the administration in public, the wider implications are as clear as the president’s need for a better blending brush: we’re about to see a lot of the gains in representation made over the past decade vanish. 

Without Black people in positions of influence at TV and film studios, we’re almost sure to go back to turning on the TV to see a bleach blonde bad built body of content, because without decision makers who see, understand, and care about Black voices, those shows and movies won’t get made. It’s already happening, actually: a study from this year shows a steep decline in PoC leading movies last year. All that is bothersome, sure, but the most egregious and infuriating aspect of this disrespect was reflected in an anonymous quote from the story. Studios, an unnamed source in the story says, are “looking for content that appeals to a wider, more general audience.” Whew. There’s a lot wrong and a lot to unpack here. 

First, Black consumers are a broad, general audience. Year after year, studies show that Black people watch more TV than any other group (which, hhmm, some of y’all ought to be reading a book but that’s another conversation for another day.) Black people also consume more media overall. If Black users disappeared from social media tonight, taking their trend-setting speech, style, and dances with them, the platforms would be dead in a week. There’s no other way to read “a wider, more general audience” as anything other than “white,” which points to other fallacies in this retrograde thinking. TV shows and films made by and featuring Black people don’t come with “NO WHITES” warnings. White people watch shows and movies with Black people in them, and––I hope you’re sitting down for this––even actually enjoy them. There is room for entertainment with mostly white casts to coexist in the same plane as entertainment without them. It doesn’t have to be either way. Axing Black and/or PoC content to appeal to a “mass” audience is a convenient excuse. They aren’t making us a priority because they don’t want to. It’s that simple. 

But the most frustrating part is the dismissal of facts, i.e. money. Over and over again, TV shows and films with Black leads have proven profitable. Studies show that companies with diverse and inclusive teams are more profitable than those that aren’t; the same is true of TV and film. A decade ago, shows like "Scandal," "black-ish," "Empire," "Atlanta" and "Insecure" were integral in helping TV enjoy a renaissance, and usher in the streaming era. You would think, that after Black Panther smashed every conceivable box office record in 2018, power players would recognize that Black representation and financial success aren’t mutually exclusive, but alas.

Still, after "Bridgerton" became a global phenomenon, "P-Valley" and "Power" help keep the lights on at Starz, and SZA and Keke Palmer made "One of Them Days" the second-biggest box office hit of the year so far, Hollywood executives continue to cling to the myth that the “general audience” (i.e. not us, if you’re paying attention) will get them where they need to be financially.

You know what? Like Mel Robbins says, let them. Let them play in our face, fill their shows and movies with plain Janes, and watch as we turn our attention elsewhere. If it’s one thing Black people will do, it’s create and innovate, even when handed scraps. Let them miss our dollars…until we shatter records again with another undeniable blockbuster.