#jasfly

I’m tired of watching Black women fight on TV.

We’re two episodes into The Gossip Game and last night we witnessed our second fight. Sigh.

When I accepted Mona Scott-Young’s invitation to sit down for a casting meeting, I was more than skeptical. This was three weeks into Love & Hip Hop ATL and all that kept running through my mind was ‘she’s not gonna do me like she does these other women.’ And as soon as I sat down – in front of Vh1 execs, show creator Tone Boots and his team and the network casting department – I told her as much.

Mona heard me out and then informed me that she never set out to abuse Black women. And that she didn’t prompt Stevie J to keep both a mistress and a wife. All she does is give a look inside their lives.

I gave her a chance.

Within the first two weeks of filming the first ‘argument’ happened. I wasn’t there (we had an event for Ne-Yo that night). I didn’t know Viv – at that point I’d only met her once at a cast lunch. But I’d known Ms. Drama for a few years and although we’d never spent an extended period of time alone, I’d never known her to get into it with anyone. I was surprised. And immediately I blamed Mona. Here we go. So now we’re going to be out here looking crazy.

I listened to Drama’s side of the story and became a little apprehensive of Viv. And completely distrustful of Mona (we’ll talk later about how this played out).

Full disclosure: I’ve been in New York for 4 years and I’ve been blessed to make some great friends but I’ve also picked up a handful of…detractors. That’s normal. We’re adults playing in a high-stakes/high-stress industry. But what I realized is 70% of these detractors were women of color. And 50% of those began as friends and or associates.

We all know the drill: you’re cool with another woman at first and then something happens, or nothing happens and one person feels a way and somehow (often over something minute) there’s now a ‘thing’ between you. But instead of addressing it and moving on, (usually)one woman has to try to turn everybody else against you – because she’s not secure enough to be alone with her feelings. And before you know it an entire clique has formed – bonded over the dislike of one woman.

So I was dealing with this, while watching the saga between Ms. Drama verses Viv unfold. At the time I didn’t see the connection but it was coming.

The second fight happened at Bottles & Strikes. By then I had heard everyone’s accounts of the first incident and realized there was so much Ms. Drama left out. But I let it rock. I was getting to know Viv and was happy to see her at the party. The fight between them happened in another room but afterwards I was able to speak to Viv (who was very emotional) and she – along with several witnesses – all maintained that Ms. Drama was the agitator. 

As they escorted the camera crew out, Mike Kyser – someone I’ve respected professionally for years – came over and said ‘what kind of show are you making?’ It was embarrassing. I’m trying to do something I could be proud of, and this wasn’t it.

I asked to talk Drama. Scratch that, I asked to talk to Candace. As someone who appreciated her as a woman and a collegue, I needed to let her know that she was playing a role in the what was happening. That was important because unless she owned her part, it wouldn’t stop. I expected a very different conversation than the one I got. That was the first time I ever walked out of a scene. I was upset, frustrated, annoyed and a little hurt that she didn’t understand what I was trying to say. Let’s keep it funky: We’re about to be on national television and here she was acting a fool.

Ms. Drama saw that as an attack. You’ll see in the coming weeks how that played out.

It wasn’t until days later that I saw the similarities.

Sometimes, we as Black women don’t treat one another very well. Societal factors have made us defensive and (often times) insecure about who we are and afraid of who we are not. We’ve been told that we’re all in competition over men, jobs, friends, adoration, etc. And because we are such an insular culture – Black woman are known for watching/dating/buying/talking/living in our Blackness – we turn a great deal of frustration back on one another. We’re so hyper-sensitive to criticism (because we’re SO over criticized) that in the moment we often can’t discern between someone attacking us and someone trying to help us. It’s hard to see kinship in someone you’re determined to make your enemy. So (often times) we fight.

I couldn’t get mad at Mona for the fights that happened between Drama and Viv. Not when I was dealing with the very same things (via toxic email threads, vicious sub-tweets, subversive moves against me etc) in my own life. Mona didn’t make those two women fight. In that moment, instead of risking being hurt or hearing something they didn’t want to, they chose to antagonize one another. This choice is made every single day. And I couldn’t expect Mona to create a television show about us and ask her not to show all of it, including the parts we’re not proud of. 

So we can continue to complain about how we’re portrayed on television. Or we can candidly address how we treat each other in real life.

See you next week for episode three.