raia reviews: A Place Where We Belong
Representation seems like a buzzword these days. People moan and whine about the fact that every new Netflix show seems to have a queer character. They say too many reboots these days go with the girl group rework. These folks want things to be done the Wh- ahem, the right way again. For many people who complain about representation becoming too overwhelming and stifling for media, it is due to the fact that many of these people have already seen themselves reflected within dominant media. They already have a TV show character they can relate to, be it Walter White or Rick or whoever else. To see oneself reflected in media is a normative experience for these people, but to see another kind of person, Black, queer, disabled or other, is a subversive experience that elicits discomfort.
Reality is an interesting experience of duality. Where a person experiences discomfort because of subversive representation on screen, it is possible they experience a level of comfort within their lived life. For someone who finds relief from seeing someone like them on the screen, it is possible that their lived reality is one that demands they package themselves into something palatable. Often, stories are a magical way of displacing the comfortable to give space to people struggling to breathe. In a story, we prophesy about the destruction of the corrupt. In a story, we imagine power shared among the collective who exist as equals, from the youngest child to the elder whose sight has long since dimmed. When stories come to life, they act like a bridge from the idealized to the realized.
As a budding writer, I had the joy of interacting with subjects who were Kenyan through and through. Being in a space where my goal was to focus on Kenyan stories, good things about a nation that is often very scarce in good news, began to open my eyes to the world that is held away from Black people. As I write this, people ask questions about why it always seems that the general media, whether American or international, loves to plaster images and videos of Black death all over the news and social media whenever these tragedies take place. These views of Black people, as dying bodies, are normative for mainstream media. This is embodied in the horror cliche of the Black guy dying first as much as it is embodied in the snarky Black best friend whose existence is only an accompaniment to the white main character.
When stories like these became normative, they are terror continually imagined. Research shows the impact of constantly being exposed to these stories and what these terrors do to the minds of Black people. These stories are a burden and a testament to a world that was designed to lock people out on the basis of their race. They are stories that continually drive the idea that somehow this is the only society possible for Black people across the world, whether the people in power are the descendants of the people who colonized them before or the descendants of the Black people who rushed to occupy the thrones their oppressors once occupied. These narratives, embodied in the news and imagined in music, movies, books, and social media, tell Black people that they are lesser citizens in the world. And they say that somehow this is okay.
Raia is a Swahili word that means citizen. Black people are citizens of the world. Without delving into the violence of colonization and the borders that now separate Black people, and often keep them out from places their ancestors roamed freely, raia reviews exists as a borderless space for every Black consumer of media to find something that feels like home. For people who have never experienced a stable situation as far as a home is concerned, even the sense of comfort and belonging are foreign. For these people, finding home is an experience that is every bit as emotional as it is material and concrete. Finding stories that feel like home is not only about forms or faces or representation, it is also about content and spirit.
When it comes to making a home for Black media, it is my greatest hope that raia reviews won’t be a monolith of Blackness, or what dominant cultures like colonization and all its angry children think Blackness is. raia reviews is a home for the dynamic expression of Black people everywhere on this amazing planet. As we stretch the boundaries of what parts of our expression is allowed, and do away with these limitations entirely, may this column be a space of liberation, and the right to be, think, feel, dance, write, sing, and create like we belong here.
