A recent New York Times article features a discussion with Shonda Rhimes about her wildly successful ABC drama Scandal.

The show – which rakes in over 8 million viewers an episode – stars Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, a D.C. crisis manager embroiled in a torrid affair with the President.

Its incredibly salacious, and made all the more scandalous because of an element rarely discussed on the show; race. Olivia Pope is black, and the President is white.

On the widely-held critique that the show is unrealistically colorblind, Rhimes has an interesting take on the subject.

From the New York Times:

“When people who aren’t of color create a show and they have one character of color on their show, that character spends all their time talking about the world as ‘I’m a black man blah, blah, blah,’ ” she says. “That’s not how the world works. I’m a black woman every day, and I’m not confused about that. I’m not worried about that. I don’t need to have a discussion with you about how I feel as a black woman, because I don’t feel disempowered as a black woman.”

This season on “Scandal,” race has been more openly discussed. In one scene, Olivia remarked to Fitz that she was feeling “a little Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson” about their relationship, one of the first overt references to its racial aspect. Rhimes had written the line into three previous scripts and taken it out each time. She finally included it, but only as a flashback, later in the show’s run but early in Olivia’s relationship with Fitz, when Rhimes knew it would have been on Olivia’s mind. “I don’t think that we have to have a discussion about race when you’re watching a black woman who is having an affair with the white president of the United States,” she explains. “The discussion is right in front of your face.”

Read more at the New York Times

 

Are you a fan of Scandal?

Do you agree with Rhimes?

Is it unnecessary for the show to make overt references to race?

Sound off below!