“Orange Is The New Black”, isn’t that a microaggression?

Let’s take a journey through popular Netflix original series “Orange Is The New Black” shall we? Netflix advertises “Orange is the New Black” as a series about “a privileged New Yorker who ends up in a women’s prison when a past crime catches up with her in this Emmy-winning series from the creator of “Weeds” (2017), however Netflix fails to include that the privileged New Yorker is a white women known as Piper Chapman. I choose to ask if the title “Orange is the New Black” is a microagression because I think of the orange symbolizing prison, and orange becoming the new black, to me, defines slavery within the prison industrial complex. If Piper Chapman is the star of the show, and she is white, why is the show not named “Orange is the New White”? Think about that as you read through the following paragraphs.

Suzanne M. Enck and Megan E. Morrisseys’ peer-reviewed scholarly journal, “If Orange Is the New Black, I Must Be Color Blind: Comic Framings of Post-Racism in the Prison-Industrial Complex” published in Critical Studies in Media Communication (2016) describes how color blindness and comic framing allows for whitewashed colorblind media. Enck and Morrissey evaluate prisons, whiteness, and colorblind racism through comic fool Piper Chapman, star of the show “Orange Is The New Black”. The authors “argue that the first season of OITNB encourages white audience identification primarily through the show’s protagonist who, by providing a comic frame, also enables critiques of post-racial fantasies that so frequently reify existing U.S. social relations” become relatable with white experiences. The clip above from YouTube does a wonderful job representing how Piper Chapman does indeed have relatable white experiences, most prisoners of color do not.

Suzanne M. Enck and Megan E. Morrisseys’ use multiple reliable sources such as PCARE (2007)­ and The Sentencing Project https://www.sentencingproject.org (2014) to explain how television programming often creates “a fictional colorless world in which the ideology of the American dream dictates that anyone can succeed with hard work, and as such promotes the idea that racial inequalities have no structural or institutional origin or solution” resulting in colorblind media. Colorblind media does not accurately depict the struggles of all races, “colorblindness does not deny the existence of race but denies the claim that race is responsible for alleged injustices that reproduce group inequalities, privilege Whites, and negatively impacts on economic mobility, the possession of social resources, and the acquisition of political power”. Piper Chapman’s “race and class privilege position her as a “good (white) girl”—a status she is able to achieve by acquiescing to and complicity reproducing the authority of whiteness” while being the protagonist of a television show representing low income and minority races and race relations seems to be quite colorblind, in my opinion.

The purpose of “If Orange Is the New Black, I Must Be Color Blind: Comic Framings of Post-Racism in the Prison-Industrial Complex” is to explain how the media does not accurately represent people of color. “As audiences relate to Piper and come to sympathize with other women of color, they are led to question some especially harsh realities that stem from systemic racial/class discrimination and that are protected within powerful discourses of color blindness”. The piece is used to help readers evaluate the level of under-representation that takes place within social hierarchy’s and institutions.

“If Orange Is the New Black, I Must Be Color Blind: Comic Framings of Post-Racism in the Prison-Industrial Complex” is written for an audience with access to scholarly journals. I purpose this piece is written to inform academics, scholars, and the educated masses about the unequal representation of all races on television through the portrayal of Piper Chapman. I believe the audience also needs access to some sort of platform to watch “Orange Is the New Black” to adequately understand what the author is trying to explain and identify within comic framing.

I found this piece to be highly informative. The piece identified how Piper Chapman lessens the harsh realities of the PIC by being a ‘gateway drug’ “implying that her sanitized, upper-class whiteness is one mode of identification (albeit problematic and limited) for many viewers who may not otherwise even be exposed to alternate racial realities”. However, the piece also stated that if Piper Chapman was not the protagonist, the story-line would not have been so success, which I truly believe to be correct.

With popular media being more and more about the division of race and race relation identities, I feel popular culture reinforces racial tense. For example, “Fresh Off the Boat” is a television series that “takes a humorous look at the lives of immigrants in America”. I feel “Fresh Off the Boat” highlights some very important issues immigrants do come to face but the reality is, the television series makes light of these important issues. Although many claim “Orange is the New Black” and “Fresh Off the Boat” as series that “expanded racial divides” by providing women and people of color with significant leading roles, the roles are often limited and restricted by what is considered to be popular at the time. If you are having a hard time remember what makes something popular, I suggest going back to my earlier blog posts and rereading! Popular culture is about a lot more than what is just popular. I believe the reason “Orange is the New Black” and “Fresh Off the Boat” are popular are because they address social problems in which their audiences can relate.  Eddie Huang does an awesome job explaining how “Fresh Off the Boat” brings experiences to mainstream television that have not been so easily accessible in his VICE Podcast below!