tvd racism

HELP IM WRITING AN ESSAY ON RACISM IN TVD DUE TMRW,,, explain the “magical negro” trope to me and its implications ??? all bonkamily feel free to add!!!!

November 8, 2018 — Leave a comment

kingcobrakai1972:

i’ve gotten a handful of troll anons recently, so i’m not sure how serious this ask is, (if it is i’m sorry), but i’ll post it and see i anyone wants to link to any metas on this.

there are POC in the bonkai fandom that could explain this better than me/ have explained it

Magic Negro: A black character who exist only to further white characters development. They seemingly have no other life or objective other than to serve this white character.

They might want to look up “Happy Slave” an “Mammy” as well.

  • Happy Slave: Most notable by the movie Songs From the South one of Disney’s most offensive film which featured this trope. It’s self explanitory but it feature character in positions of forced servitude that not only seem like their happy about their position but are voluntarily in this position. While this applies to Bonnie, it’s most notable with Emily when they call her Katherine’s “Handmaiden”. Civil War Era Virginia, that’s no handmaiden. It also can apply to Beau the mute heretic who followed Lily with a devotion and obligation none of the other Heretics had.
  • Mammy:

    amiable, loyal, maternal, non-threatening, obedient, and submissive. The mammy figure demonstrated deference to white authority. On occasion, the mammy was also depicted as a sassy woman. She was devoted to her owners/employers and her primary goal in life was to care for their needs. Some portrayals had the mammy have a family of her own. But her caregiving duties would always come first, leading to the mammy being portrayed as a neglectful parent or grandparents. an asexual figure, “devoid of any personal desires that might tempt her to sin”. This helped the mammy serve as both a confidant and a moral guide to her young charges, capable of keeping them in line. Her personal attributes include infinite patience, self-deprecating wit, an implicit understanding and acceptance of her own inferiority, and her devotion to whites. This is Bonnie to a T, with her “loyaly” and willingness to sacrifice her self for other’s with little to no care about her life. And her love life, she always been short changed in that department and we all know that ships are currency on TVD. For all intents and purposes she was asexual.

Here are some Links I reference often:

If they’re actually serious about this I suggest they look into it on their own. I spent a good portion of time years ago and still do today researching it and it all started with a simple google search of vampire diaries racism. That led me to a lot of things on the subject most of which aren’t listed because I don’t have the time, but they aren’t that hard to find. 

But even with the sexist comments Nina gets she has a huge bunch of her fans and tvd fans that come to her rescue. Like you cannot even say her eyebrows are too thick without her stans jumping up and down. Tvd fans legit start hashtags if they see one comment that’s not pride to any of the white actors yet in the same breath call Kat petty for clapping back or blocking people. Because no one from the fandom can give a shit about the racist hate Kat gets.

October 28, 2018 — Leave a comment

Of course they don’t give a shit because they’re the main curators of it, in fact, most of the racist comments Kat receives are from Nina fans.

Paul flip flops with the ships he’s involved in yet he’s never called out for it but he always shown his distain for the show. Like you said Nina never acknowledges tvd unless she has a new project out and even then it’s something as simple as liking or posting a throwback and she’s such a queen for it. Not to mention she’s thrown shade and had a part to play in the hate Kat gets from her fans but does nothing to stop it. But god forbid Kat asks people to stop tagging her in pics

October 28, 2018 — Leave a comment

Exactly. Kat is actually very interactive with her fans which made that we miss you comment that got everyone freaking out (not that they weren’t before) all the more ridiculous. Kat’s fan know exactly where to find her–in the past two years she’s been in a lot of projects and still more to come and even when she isn’t she’s not hard to find because she’s one of the most interactive cast members with her fan base. But in the end she’s still the one who catches most flack and the worst kind because Nina, Paul, or Ian have to deal with what Kat does just simply due to her skin color, the worst they have to deal with is people badgering them about a show they no longer car about. Nina may get some sexist comments but I have yet to see her get any hate that’s anywhere near as bad as the shit they’ve said to Kat.

Do you think any of her “friends” actually cared about Bonnie? I saw mentioned that Kai is the only one who made effort to apologize to her. From what I recall, the Mystic Falls gang treated her like a magical fix it and nothing more. Nobody ever really rallied for her like they would for Elena or Caroline in danger. Their group wouldn’t survive five minutes of Bonnie up and left town to start her own life

October 28, 2018 — Leave a comment

I think they thought they actually cared about her, but never actually did because when you do you don’t ignore their pain and suffering like that. I think their heads were so far up their own ass, and that they were so used to Bonnie solving it for them that their privilege didn’t allow them to think about her side of things. They only had half-ass comment here and there about her well being but none of that matters unless they actually do anything. Bonnie did things, she was a loyal and good best friend which is funny because you never really hear about that from the characters on the show, but they’ll go on and on about what a good person Elena is despite her never showing those traits, what a great person Caroline is despite her compliance and ability to bend her morals for her friends. Bonnie gets none of that she just gets called judgemental which is a criticism that honesty fits Caroline more but I never see her called, I consistently only see this in reference to black women.

Basically racism was so ingrained in the show and, subsequently, the characters that their version of caring is pretty much the equivalent of a child’s love for their black nanny in every “happy slave” piece of media. They care about her, but only in reference to what they can do for them but TVD’s worse because a child is actually ignorant and can learn, the MFG can’t and as shown by the end of the series, never can learn better.

Plec really gave zero fucks about Bonnie. She literally had her there for diversity points that’s it. And the fact that people constantly go at kat about not coming back for legacies or in general being ‘ungrateful’ is bs. The gratitude is only directed towards Kat despite other cast members openly trashing the show.

October 28, 2018 — Leave a comment

Kat can’t so much as breath without getting flack from the TVD fandom. I remember years ago when she was still on the show she did an interview where she said she didn’t identify with Bonnie–it was out of context and she was misquoted–oh dear lord the outcry of the TVD fans all giving the same comments about how she should be grateful and she was rude. That same outcry happened again during her “Twitter-gate” moment where she simply asked people not to tag her in things she’s not in. A simply reasonable request, and even that comment was reasonable because why would someone identify with willingly being the servant of some white girl, but of course because it’s Kat and she’s black she should be nicer and grateful for even being on the show.

Nina only acknowledges fans when she needs to promote something she’s in, Paul has made several scathing comments about the show, Ian noted his dissatisfaction all the time, but none of them get called rude or ungrateful, they actually get praised for how much they seperate themselves from the show. We all know why there’s this difference, but what did we all expect, a racist show can only breed a racist fandom.

Apparently, Plec even had Tyler choose Liv’s well being over Bonnie’s? Wow, so it was basically “This precious white girl is too delicate to deal with Kai, Bonnie is strong. It sucks but life be like that sometimes :/” Bonnie really deserves to set that entire town on fire and peace out

October 27, 2018 — Leave a comment

Girl who brought you back from the dead is apparently worth less than the girl who’s sleeping with you.

Or what plec was actually getting at:

White Girl > Bonnie

Plec trying to convince me Esther, Freya and Hope are all more powerful than Bonnie is so aggravating. First of all, Esther ain’t done nothing groundbreaking and her accomplishments all hinge on the Bennett labor. Freya is only “more powerful” because she’s white and has autonomy with her magic Bonnie never enjoyed. Characters being all in awe of Plec’s Mary Sue self insert makes me roll my eyes because Bonnie could easily pull that off if ya’ll knocked off the nosebleed and migraine fest

October 26, 2018 — Leave a comment

For real though, not only did Esther use a spell from the Bennetts but had to channel their magic to accomplish it. She really didn’t do anything all that great, all she did was create the bastardization of Qetsiyah’s, who was able to create perfect immortality without the hiccups of Esther’s.

I don’t even know enough about Hope or Freya because I stopped watching TO after season 1, but I can guess it’s not as impressive as what any Bennett has already done just without the recognition because that’s essentially the thing that separates them. They do less, suffer through less, but get the high titles simply because they’re white and Plec doesn’t know how to write agency unless they’re white.

And then there’s Daliah, again I don’t know much about her but I remember the debates on which was more powerful, her or Qetsiyah. Qetsiyah was the obvious take but for some reason people wanted to argue her grand of immortality, which was essentially hibernation, was better than the true immortality Qetsiyah created along with an entire dimension she built for herself and her lover and she did that just out of blind rage, imagine if she had focus, she’d be damn near unstoppable. They’re not even in the same league but because she white and actually got a storyline catered to her bu Plec, people think her accomplishments are are even remotely the same power level.

Like, I get that apparently, witches in Esther’s bloodline, firstborn ones, are born with devastating power but that still don’t explain why Hope is basically magical jesus. I am tired of the white chosen one narrative, uwu blessed white child. Kai and Bonnie’s children would have multiple reasons as to why they’re powerful

October 24, 2018 — Leave a comment

I always wide-eyed people who call Estger the Original witch because a) just completely inaccurate there were witches well before her and that’s noted in the episode explaining her origins, and b) the spell that made her famous was stolen from Ayanna Bennett who was an ancestor of Qetsiyah, the originator of that spell. Pretty much everything she did was built on the backs of the Bennetts, they just don’t get the credit–they never get the credit they just always end up in the servant position while the show kept trying to pass it off as “best friend” or my personal favorite “handmaiden”.

The moment Esther is introduced, the first white witch on the show, is the moment witches started getting more agency, but only of they were white. With her introduction the number of black witches, the default up until that point, starts dwindling, and it was as though Plec was saying, “ah, witches I can finally write for” because it was only then that they stopped being servants.

So after observing this I don’t mess with white witches on the show whether it be Hope, or Wonder twins, or even Liv and Luke. I need more than them being white to explain their emense power and agency, which Kai had. I knew why he was so powerful, first dependent on the amount of power he absorbed, then due to the fact that the collective power of the Gemini coven.

And then there’s Bonnie, there’s almost a “chosen one” attribute to her, but she never gets to enjoy it, she never gets to have agency over her magic which is what eliminates her from that category, but that doesn’t stop people from complaining. Over the years I’ve seen more complaints about the Bennetts being apart of every big magical event than I have about Hope, and the wonder twins near God like level of magic which is crazy when you consider they’re all plot-hole characters to begin with. It angers people that Bonnie is supposed to be so powerful which after all she had been through I don’t understand why. There’s more explanation for her prowess as a witch than there has been for any other character, but they didn’t have issues with that.

So in short, I’m tired of the “white chosen one” narrative too especially even within these narratives the Bennett line has done more impressive things, they just are never acknowledged.