The Devil is a dark-skinned Black Guy
The Vampire Diaries, Colorism, and the White Lens on Good and Evil
Recently, I binge-watched The Vampire Diaries in all of its eight-season glory. Honestly, it was very tropey, repetitive, and formulaic, but I have this OCD problem where once I start watching a series, I have to finish it. Sometimes, it’s a very annoying problem to have, especially when the show isn’t great.
While I was engrossed in all of that teen angst paranormal drama though, I started to notice certain things about the show:
- Total White Savior complex. I mean, literally all of the heroes in the show are white, with the one exception of Bonnie Bennett, your friendly neighborhood witch.
- There was just one Latin character on the entire show in all of its 8 seasons, and yeah, she was an antihero. So long, Rayna Cruz.
- Asians are dispensable. Literally, there were only two full Asian characters on the show and one half Asian and they all died pretty quickly. Their existence were only to serve as sidekicks to others and they never really got much of their own backstories explored. Typical Hollywood.
- Light-skinned Black people were good guys and all through 7 whole seasons, there were no major dark-skinned Black characters on the show until…
