Issa Rae Diop (1985- ), better known as Issa Rae, is a Black American television producer, writer and director. She is best known for “Awkward Black Girl” (2011), which went viral on YouTube a few years back. She is now working on the television show “Insecure” for HBO, still in development. The main character is loosely based on her.
“Awkward Black Girl” was a workplace comedy where she played the main character, J. It was not just funny, it not only put people of colour centre stage, but it did not present them as stereotypes. Hollywood allows Black women to be “sassy”, angry, oversexed, matriarchal, tragic or even magical, but not awkward. Zora Neale Hurston said Hollywood saw people of colour as “made of bent wires without insides at all”. Not so Rae, with her heavy use of voice-overs.
In part she was reacting to “Precious” (2009). But mostly it grew out of her picture of Blacks not as Other or non-White but as people in their own right, whose lives matter apart from White people.
Enter Hollywood: After “Awkward Black Girl” went viral, Hollywood wanted to make it into a television show. A dream come true! But they wanted to water it down, like by making it “pan-racial” or by making the main character light-skinned with long, straight hair – the opposite of Issa Rae’s J!
In 2012, she hooked up with Shonda Rhimes, then mainly known for “Grey’s Anatomy” (2005- ). Rhimes was going to help her make “I Hate L.A. Dudes”, but that fell through: Rae herself had watered down the script, which made no one happy since it was no longer funny.
Now, in 2015, she is with HBO working on “Insecure”. HBO is known for giving producers more freedom, but even they wanted to push their own “experienced” people on her, while she wanted people of colour who understood where she was coming from. HBO apparently backed off, but she still had to find a showrunner who understands both Hollywood and where she is coming from – a rare thing in a Hollywood that is still a White man’s world.
To help make Hollywood less White, she works on Color Creative, where she helps writers of colour produce Web shows and showcase their talent.
Her parents met while they were studying in France. Her mother is from Louisiana, her father, a doctor, is from Senegal. She grew up in well-to-do neighbourhoods in Dakar, Senegal, in (White) Potomac, Maryland and, most of all, in (Black) South Los Angeles (aka South Central), where “Awkward Black Girl” is shot. At White private schools she stood out because she was Black. At Black and Latino public schools she was mocked for acting too “White”.
At Stanford University she made “Dorm Diaries”, a sort of all-Black “Real World”. When she was working on pitching it to MTV and BET, her place was robbed. She lost everything, not just her cameras, but even her scripts. She was deep in debt. But then she got the idea for “Awkward Black Girl”.
– Abagond, 2015.
Sources: Mainly New York Times magazine (2015).
See also:
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I have a deep respect for this black woman.
She didn’t sell out like Rhimes by creating the typical shows that play to white people’s racist stereotype of black people, like Scandal.
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I think she should keep it on the web. Maybe even set up with kwelitv(the black netflix). People like me who do not have cable rely on good webisodes for entertainment.
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I love awkward black girl glad she didn’t cave in and bend to what Hollywood wanted. She’s remarkable.
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issa rae is awesome
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I’m a huge fan of Issa, however she disappointed me a bit on an anti-black male panel on the Larry Wilmore show. Didn’t know she was Senegalese.
(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=anIzcje2qbI)
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Awkward Black Girl was everything!!!
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I like her on the black woman’s talk show Exhale on Aspire channel. She is very bright and articulate. And she was featured on one of my favorite podcast Another Round and she was the guest and she was so funny.
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@ The Pragmatist
Ah yes, when someone says it’s difficult to find a decent, hardworking, intelligent Black person we call that bigotry.
When someone says it’s difficult to find a decent, hardworking, intelligent Black man however we call that Black women’s empowerment.
Funny how voids in logic of this nature fly right over the heads of the sheeple, or do they? Lol
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[…] Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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❤
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Ah she’s Senegalese? Never would’ve guessed…
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@ 1tawnystranger
Her father is from Senegal and she lived there as a girl for two years. I do not know where she was born. Probably Maryland.
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Here it says she was born in Los Angeles
http://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/issa-rae.html
Here, she says “The entire sixth grade. I was young, but much of my material comes from that time. It was a weird transitional period because my family moved back to Los Angeles from Potomac, Maryland, where I hadn’t been around many Black people. “.
http://www.essence.com/2011/07/26/5-questions-for-issa-rae-on-awkward-black-girl
So, it looks like she was born in Los Angeles, but went to elementary school in Potomac, MD.
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I spent several years sitting in a driveway during my son’s music lesson (taking place in the house) and watching “ABG” episodes. They were awesome and I admire her resolve to stay true to her muse.
My recollection, by the way, is that “ABG” did have a “normal” black male character, a co-worker who, like Issa’s character, held the job because he needed the paycheck but saw through the BS. I’ve forgotten his character name but he was a sometime confidante of the main character.
By the way, she did not live in South Central LA. She lived in a tony, nice neighborhood in LA, the kind of neighborhood you’d expect the child of an MD to live in.
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@ Blanc2
I disagree. According to the New York Times magazine:
View Park-Windsor Hills is one of the richest Black neighbourhoods in the country. Black South Los Angeles is not wall-to-wall gangland or something.
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@ Abagond
I agree with you. The entire View Park-Leimert Park-Ladera parts of Black LA which is extremely affluent goes completely unmentioned when talking about South LA and I think we all know why. To make matters worse and I believe proving without a doubt this is media propaganda is that these neighborhoods are just adjacent to Compton, Watts etc. They don’t want affluent Blacks shown in media, period.
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To clarify “South Central” and “South Los Angeles” are about 20 minute drive from each.
Places like Compton, Watts and South Central use to be exclusively black 20 or more years ago. And then a steady flow of Hispanics moved in starting when the U.S. accepted political refugees from San Salvador.
Here’s a recent article about gentrification problems in what the L.A. Times calls the “Black Beverly hills”.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-adv-view-park-20150719-story.html#page=1
BTW drop out rates are way higher in Compton then in Leimert Park, Windsor Hills ect even though both cities are within ten miles of each other and have similar racial makeups . The economics of a community plays a roll in how well students do.
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@ Michael Jon Barker
I thought South Central is just an old name for South Los Angeles, of which View Park-Windsor Hills is a part:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Los_Angeles
Is that wrong?
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As an L.A. resident here nobody refers to “South L.A.” I’ve never once heard that area called that.If you speak of south central you are referring to the areas of south central, Watts, Compton ect.
When people speak of Leimert Park, Windsor Hills ect they refer to those cities directly. Those cites aren’t considered apart of south central even though the map you have shows all of south L.A.
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Agreed with Michael Jon Barker. Neighborhood nicknames have specific social-understood boundaries. What people call “South Central” is a specific area within the southern portion of LA.
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My mistake I meant the southernmost portion of Ladera was close to Inglewood, not Compton. I was just referring to the parts of LA where Blacks are most heavily concentrated. The maps always say South Los Angeles, I know areas around/near it like Ladera, Fox Hills part of Culver City etc are cities or unincorporated areas I was just using the term South in a general sense.
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Windsor Hills is a place where black doctors, actors, athletes, and other higher income earners live. It’s right up the hill from the Magic Johnson Starbucks that was the location for a scene in “Something New”. Your bit of trivia. It’s a place of large stucco ranch-style homes with abstract shaped swimming pools in the back yard. Expensive German imported automobiles. Private schools. Etc. Anybody who lives there would not hesitate to point out the error of lumping it with South Central. I’ve been in both places multiple times. In one I feel like I’m living in a set from a movie, the scene where the hero has just hit it big and buys his dream home; in the other I slump down low in my seat to minimize the number of passersby who see me there.
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@ Blanc2
I removed the reference to South Central in the post. I get it now, it is class coded. Thank you.
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Great, didn’t know she was working on new series. Thanks for writing this, Abagond.
I must say, I was disappointed with the changes in Awkward Black Girl. It turned more into a drama series near its end…
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HBO has given the greenlight to “Insecure”, though no date has yet been announced for when it will be shown.
Source::
http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2015/10/hbo_picks_up_issa_rae_s_30_minute_comedy_series_insecure.html
http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/insecure-hbo-issa-rae-series-order-comedy-1201619196/
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She is working on a new HBO series Insecure and everyone should check out her YouTube channel were she showcases other black filmmakers. It’s monthly and called Shortfilm Sundays. There are so many talented short films by aspiring black filmmakers that interesting. This one called Ladylike is really good. The two actresses in Ladylike are fierce and beautiful. They look like daydreams but are total nightmares. Great soundtrack to accompany the beautiful cinematography.
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Issa Rae’s YouTube channel has a nice romantic series called First that I am enjoying it kind of reminds me of Love Jones from back in the early 90’s. I love seeing black images of black men and women together loving each other.
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Inscure has finally made it to HBO. My wife and I like it. It doesn’t seem watered down to me meaning HBO has given her the freedom to write the show as she wants.
One aspect that I like is that Blacks are the default norm and whites are shown as caricatures, the opposite of what you normally see on TV.
The issues of race are written from a Black perspective and flow easily into the story line.
She has a gift of story telling and just sparkles.
(https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=16bxnrquShA)
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Insecure is hilarious. I can’t get rid of her “Broken Pu**y” rap and the shower sex scene was pure comedy. Pretty good, but not great.
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Anybody remember the sitcom called South Central? Can anyone find. episodes of this show?
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No, but you can look it up on Google Play.
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Insecure was funny i enjoyed it and am looking forward to a second season. So congratulations to Issa for a successful first season.
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Season 2 of insecure! The wife was opposed to it but she’s catching up on s1 now. I argued it was doing something for the black community by showing leadership and that it can be done; she’s still out there with maybe she sold her soul. I’m workin on it.
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