Glee and Race: A Little Off Key

The new television show Glee debuted to rave reviews and extremely positive audience feedback. Not only was it a completely new genre of TV, a scripted musical comedy, but they also introduced a band of misfits and their fearless leader as the main characters. The glee club’s members cross racial, ethnic, and sexual-orientation boundaries. Many people tuned into the show for its musical talent, but also for its diversity in genre and characters. Glee even managed to nab an astounding 19 Emmy nominations in its first season on the air

Glee showcases these minorities every week, something that other popular TV shows cannot take credit for. If you look at shows like Gossip Girl or Desperate Housewives there are very few minority characters in lead roles- or roles at all. It is important that Glee represents a variety of races and ethnicities because there are many people who are constantly misrepresented in the media. If they can see someone like themselves in the show, it is progressive. Additionally, the minorities are shown in a positive light and accepting light. The glee club is a group that works together, and they do not get divided along racial lines. But simply because Glee has Blacks, Latinas, and Asians does not mean they are they are portrayed the best way.

            Glee has not done a good job when it comes to addressing interracial relationships. Many times the relationships that are depicted are the show do not cross racial boundaries. In season one episode, “Mash Up”, football bully Noah Puckerman is watching a movie about the Holocaust with his family while wearing a yarmulke and decides that he wants to date Rachel Berry, the only other Jewish character on the show.  Firstly this is very stereotypical of how a Jewish family would act, which enforces a common sense about how Jewish people act .The plot revolves around Noah, also known as Puck, convincing himself that he is being a “good Jew” because he is dating Rachel. Another example is with Tina, who is Asian. She briefly dated Artie who is white but it was very short-lived. Soon after she stopped seeing Artie, she went to “Asian Camp” and became Mike Chang’s girlfriend. This gives the impression that Asians must go to Asian Camps, and that Asians are more attracted to each other because it is biological. The only Black character, Mercedes, rarely has love interests on the show. In one episode she thinks she likes Kurt, who is Gay,  which made that relationship short-lived and superficial. The only other time there is someone for Mercedes is when Kurt tries to set her up with one of the only other Black students at school. This portrayal of interracial relationships is not conducive to positive attitudes about race relations in the media. As Bonilla Silva concludes, many feel this romantic segregation and do not see it as a racial problem, when it is.  Minorities have been isolated from whites with romantic involvement and Glee’s continuation of this trend does not help anything. There are a few situations in which Glee addresses racial stereotypes in a respectable manner, by breaking them down and opposing them. Tina and Mike not being the typical hyper smart Asians is one example.  But in most cases they take the generalizations about race too far. Let’s take Mercedes as an example. She is Black, fat, sassy, and always ends up belting the gospel-style note in the songs, but is very rarely the soloist. The show also has her dress in typically Black clothes which further emphasizes the fac that she is completely stereotyped as "the Black girl". Additionally, many of the white characters play the normative, white roles (quarterback, cheerleaders, star-singer) other than Kurt and Artie who are gay and disabled, respectively. These characterizations only reinforce the ideas of how society believes certain races or ethnicities should act.

For a young Black girl watching on TV, she may see Mercedes and think that she is supposed to act the same way. Though Mercedes isn’t a bad role model, a TV show shouldn’t be depicting characters on stereotypical racial lines.

I am not arguing that Glee is a bad show or that is racially intolerant. My claim is that even though, yes, the show has displayed these underrepresented minorities, there is a lot of progress to be made. In the following episodes, I advocate for increased disintegration of these racial stereotypes and an effort to put more of the minorities at the forefront of the plot. Glee has the opportunity to use the racial diversity already in place for great use.

Works Cited:

“Glee Scores 19 Primetime Emmys.” IMDB. 8 July 2010. Web. 6 Dec 2010. <http://www.imdb.com/news/ni3212408/>.should perform in society.
Lull, James. "Hegemony." Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Gail Dines. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003. 63.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. "Peeking Inside the (White) House of Colorblindness: The Significance of Whites' Segregation." Racism Without Racists: Color Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United states. Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2006.

 Kennedy, Randall. "How Are We Doing With Loving?: Race, Law and Intermarriage." Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader. Ed. Kevin R. Johnson. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Print.