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Written by: Danielle Broadway @DanielleBroadw1

On Valentines Day, the new High Fidelity television reboot stunned audiences for its creative reimaging of a gender-swapped Rob (Zoe Kravitz) and a diverse cast of characters.

Critics and viewers couldn’t deny that there was just something too cool and glamorous about Zoe’s portrayal of Rob that didn’t have the same pitiful grunginess of the 1995 Rob. The television adaptation lends a new sort of swagger that the earlier depiction couldn’t quite capture. Zoe Kravitz’s performance immediately had many of us nerding out and loving her alternative Black girl vibes. While Rob is literally beyond obsessed with great music, previously worked as a DJ and is rocking some cute braids, she is not performing in a stereotypical manner. Her Blackness is a part of her but isn’t overaccentuated to draw readers to only view her as a static Black woman. Rob is, in the purest form, just Rob. She has a tortured love life and has made relationship mistakes just as most of us have.

Her performance is both relatable and intriguing as we receive glimpses into her past love lives and the hefty baggage she’s been lugging around. She can go from making you adore her to making you want to scream at her for being so mean to Clyde! (Like, seriously, no spoilers, but he is such a sweetie and I just can’t with how she treats him). 

This adaptation seems to have it all, but there is one big problem I’ve noticed. While petite light-skinned Rob gets to be an unconventional alt-Black girl badass, her thicker darker-skinned best friend Cherise (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is perpetuated as the same stereotypical Black girl archetype that we’re all just sick and tired of seeing. Cherise is loud, rude, distrustful and falls far behind, Rob’s other best friend’s, Simon (David H. Holmes), plot development. Unlike other characters, she gets no romantic interest or history to be explored. Cherise is presented as a confrontational, asexual, big Black girl.

Uh oh, I thought we were making so much progress. Cherise is depicted as being “all talk, and no action” when it comes to her flaunted musical talent for most of the season, making our girl look like a poser. But wait, it gets worse, Cherise is also poor and far less successful than Rob. I know the fact that it’s an adaptation may explain Cherise working for Rob. However, if they decided to flip the script, quite literally, and include two Black women, they could have gone another step forward. Rob deciding to give Cherise pity handouts while being an awful friend (as well as kind of an awful ex-girlfriend) doesn’t seem to dull Kravitz’s bravado to the viewership.  Rob’s non-traditional portrayal as a Black woman seems to be more palatable because Kravitz is biracial, attractive, light-skinned and thin. It seems that Cherise was written to remind viewers that Black women that look, quite frankly, more Black are still not allowed to access complexity and fluidity within their representations. 

There has been a long-standing controversy regarding the colorism in casting and writing in the television industry. Kravitz’s biracial identity seems to give her the green light to operate outside the boundaries of typical Blackness. Da’Vine’s character, however, leaves us halted right where we’ve always been, and to be honest, I’m sick of it. I’m proud of them for including two Black women as central characters in a show, but this is setting a bad precedent, and it’s not okay. The perpetuated binarism of “the more docile light-skinned Black girl,” and “the angry dark-skinned Black girl” have got to end. With the first season already finished up, we can only look to the next season and hope that Cherise has more opportunities to become a more developed character.  No spoilers, I promise, but the end of season one may be a hopeful segway into seeing Cherise bloom during season two. Fingers crossed!

Danielle Broadway is an English Literature MA student at California State University, Long Beach. She has been published in LA Weekly and Angels Flight-literary west. She is a writer for CSULB’s the Daily49er and is a managing editor for Watermark, her school’s academic literary journal. She has worked in education for more than six years and has a passion for social justice. To that end, she is an intern at East Yards: Communities For Environmental Justice in Long Beach, where she works with community leaders to change environmental policy. Danielle’s dream is to become an English professor and a journalist. Inspired by her family and her ancestors, she wants to be a catalyst for social change both in the classroom and beyond. She’s also a total NERD! Obsessed with everything Marvel and interested in video games, cosplay, Black Girl Nerd life, Nerd fashion, anime and so much more!

The post ‘High Fidelity’ Reboot: Alt-Black Girl Magic or Stereotypically Tragic? appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

The coronavirus is changing the way Americans live every day but for low wage workers who don’t have paid time off, health insurance, or the ability to take time off, the virus will hit them harder.

Rachel Sulkes, a communications director for a California-based union, says the combination of low wage worker’s lack of access to healthcare and work demands can make a virus spread almost unstoppable.

“If you have people exposed to lots of other people, who are also unable to access their healthcare and yet feel pressure to be at work, that is literally a toxic combination,” Sulkes told Fast Company.

Complicating matters is that low wage workers who have access to healthcare may not take advantage of it because the out-of-pocket costs are too high to afford combined with other expenses. Many Americans sacrifice health for food, gas, and rent. Melissa Marshall, CEO of CommuniCare Health Centers added that nutrition and living quarters also play a factor.

“We know that people of lower socioeconomic status are dealing with, often, several issues at once,” said CommuniCare’s Marshall. “They may have crowded living situations or be homeless. They may have food insecurity or poor nutrition and little or no access to healthcare, or fear seeing a doctor because they are worried about their immigration status.”

A 2016 study by the Yale School of Public Health found people in neighborhoods where most live below the poverty line are roughly twice as likely to get the flu as those in wealthier areas. Low rates of vaccination and crowded housing are among the reasons an infection can spread quickly.

The coronavirus has already had drastic effects on the US economy, including the cancellation of many social and sporting events around the country and according to a new study, the virus can stay in a person for up to five weeks.

As many are forced to “coronavirus and chill” over the next few weeks after being advised to self-isolate and distance socially, now’s the time to create a household plan if you haven’t already. And part of that plan is stocking up on all of the necessary (and some unnecessary essentials) that will hold you over in case there’s an outbreak in your local community.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is recommending two weeks’ worth of supplies for the time being, but that could change at any moment. Though we don’t recommend hoarding materials in stores or online (because honestly, what are you going to do with 144 rolls of toilet paper), it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Here are a few items to stock your pantry, and also a few yummy snacks that will fill your belly — just don’t eat them all in the first few days!

The post Coronavirus Have You Stuck At Home? Here Are A Few Items To Stock Your Pantry appeared first on Essence.

Talk about doing something foolish and dangerous! With the major concern about the COVD-19 coronavirus outbreak and the ensuing hysteria, Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert playfully touched all of the microphones and phones from the media after participating at a press conference. (Yes, there’s video.)

A couple of days later, Gobert tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Video shows Rudy Gobert, an NBA player who reportedly tested positive for coronavirus, touching microphones with his hands after speaking with reporters on Monday https://t.co/ekxauQo8KV pic.twitter.com/pd7Q9vJkCz

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 12, 2020