TOKEN BLACK GIRL – FESCH.TV

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

A collaboration of Luci Mbiola @lucy_rookie Fashion Designer, Model, Creator from Cape Town, South Africa and Nicole Pfister @nicole.pfister Filmmaker, Visual Artist from Bern, Switzerland.

„*TOKEN BLACK GIRL* –
A black female with no defining character qualities that is added to the cast of a movie or television show to appear diverse.
They will notably have few lines and appear only a few times in the show.
Will sometimes have a catchphrase or quirk to give the character some resemblance of a personality.

You may notice at times the character will not even be given a name (although the actor will still be credited as black girl.)
The ‚token black girl‘ is a concept with which most black girls are depressingly all too familiar and have been for too long now. It’s a reality that I’ve wrestled with so fervently because I have felt like one myself. Growing up as a black refugee girl in a predominantly white/coloured school. Fitting in was imminent
I was the only black girl in the classroom and in many of my friendship groups then. With that has often come an underlying expectation to be ‚the black one‘ to live the sassy, loud, eye-rolling, punchline-delivering, surface level stereotypes afforded to the black women we see in the white TV and film world. I live in a white filled world where my color sticks out like a highlighter. Not only must every word or action I do speak for the rest of the black community but I am watched with close eyes. I am asked questions, that if I choose to answer, speaks for my entire race. I am my own person, not like any other. There are things I share with my black culture that do not define me as a whole. My entire life has been about my dark skin and how it sets me apart for better or worse. I embrace my blackness but I also embrace my individuality and I wish others did too.“