Nancy Lee Grahn Pulls an #AllLivesMatter in Wake of Viola Davis’ Historic Emmy Win

[sheshe2]

2. Holy Shit!

Grahn eventually offered a half-assed nonapology, and when it wasn't immediately accepted, she propped herself up as a victim of an "ambush" by black people who were too "mean" to realize that she was sincere. After all, she's "spent [her] life advocating 4 equal rights 4 all human beings." In her liberal white world, any racial blindspots she has should be excused. It wasn't long before her self-imposed period of flimsy contrition disintegrated under the weight of black Twitter's pushback, and Grahn tweeted that she had been "betrayed by people [she] would have marched for."

Here's the thing: Grahn apologized for being misunderstood, not for the racist nature of her tweets. Apparently, mocking Davis' ceiling-shattering win and her road to get there was not the soap actress's intent, though all tweets point to the contrary. She just didn't want viewers to forget about the poor, marginalized white women who also have it rough, and Davis' one-minute speech threatened to minimize their suffering.


See how erasure works, how centering whiteness comes as natural to people like Grahn as breathing? It is instinctive.

Not once did she acknowledge that she was wrong and that black actresses have never had an advantage over white actresses. Never. She didn't apologize for diminishing the fact that roles for women of color in notoriously white Hollywood are scarce. Instead, she played the tiniest violin imaginable because Shonda Rhimes hasn't written a plum role for her, doubled down on her resentment that Davis dared to place her win in the turbulent historical context it deserves and repeatedly talked about how she's been "there for" black people for at least three decades.

Sorry about the bolding. I know, overdone. It stoppped me from saying what a piece of fucking asshole racist crap Grahn was saying. Ooop, guess I did it anyway.




Viola! You Rock!