Racism and racial representation on soaps

[Faulkner]

Theo Carver. Zende Forrester. T.J. Ashford. Moses Winters. If you’re a black male under 30, even if the actor is gorgeous and the character is tied to core families, you exist only as a barely used, one-dimensional prop with no POV. (And if you’re over 30, like Carter, Justin, Sean, Devon, Nate, or Eli, you’re not doing much better. Carter has a “hot story” on paper, but in reality it’s flimsy. And at least Curtis on GH has a love triangle, but he’s a C-stringer at best.)

[JellyBean]

It’s undeniable and really sad that non-white actors are extremely marginalized, not just on soaps but TV/film in general. The only soap I watch regularly anymore is B&B, and despite the fact that more diverse actors are being given more to do on screen, I still feel like those characters aren’t being written authentically. The white characters are still getting the real story, while the other characters are simply there so the show looks more “woke.” I want to believe it’s a step in the right direction, but I know if the media attention ever moves away from BLM, things will go right back to the way they were. I would honestly rather have an all white cast than a diverse cast that story isn’t written fairly for.

The last black character I remember getting any genuine kind of spotlight was Maya on B&B when she was revealed to be trans. But even that was just a gimmick on the heels of the Caitlyn Jenner controversy. After the boost that story gave the show wore off, she was relegated right back to the back burner. 

The solution is more diversity in the writing team, but that’s a whole issue in and of itself.

[Faulkner]

Like you say, the black characters on B&B are ornamental at best (almost literally with Carter, whom they value solely for his pec-tacular assets out of clothes). Less charitably, they’ve made the black characters into paper-thin interlopers who betray the white characters (Carter, Justin, and mostly likely Paris). It’s so abundantly clear they don’t care about any of these characters.