Being Mary Jane, Daniel Holtzclaw, and White Consumption of Black Pain

This morning I was walking my dog when I ran into a woman who lives in my complex that I saw yesterday, on my birthday. She asked what I ended up doing to celebrate last night, and I said, “Ate Indian food and watched Being Mary Jane. Pretty much an ideal birthday situation.” She laughed politely and then asked,

“What’s Being Mary Jane? Is that a show?”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, it’s a show.”

“What channel does it come on?”

“BET.”

As our dogs peed next to each other, I watched her face undergo a transformation of some kind: from one of curiosity to one of something like amusement.

“Is it a reality show or something?”

She’d never heard of it, and by the look on her face, it was pretty clear she was uninterested in hearing of it. “BET” had triggered something in her — I can’t say what, exactly. Contempt? I’ve had interactions like this with other white people in the past, people whose reception of cinema and television in which black characters lead is strangely dismissive, interpreting black-led narratives as something fringe; a niche separate from “real” TV.

Meanwhile, Being Mary Jane attracted 2.2 million viewers in its season 3 premiere last month and…