Its a (White) Mans World: Race, Gender, and Class in Shonda Rhimes Scandal

Elijah Taylor
Representation of Race & Ethnicity in the U.S. Media
Prof. Blanca Vasquez
Fall 2014

What does it mean to be black in America? In the Post-Civil Rights era, from the late
1960s and well into the 1970s, a series of social phenomena complicated and challenged
definitions of blackness namely the formation of a burgeoning black middle class. While a
black bourgeoisie had always been a largely present part of the black population in the
United States, the majority of black workers before the civil rights movement worked in lowpaying, menial jobs as unskilled laborers and domestic servants. With the passage of the 1964
Civil Rights Act and the changes in ideologies following desegregation, the conditions for a
black middle class were formed. How did this shift in the upward mobility of African
Americans manifest itself in the media, especially the highly mainstream medium of primetime network television? While the number of black-themed programs on television spiked in
the 1970s and on, it would be nearly forty years before a black female lead would be seen
again on network television in the ABC political drama Scandal.

The Formation of the Black Middle Class

The gains of the civil rights movement the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
1965 Voting Rights Act, and other key pieces of legislation that outlawed discrimination and
desegregation across the nation, proved to have almost an immediate effect on the upward
mobility of African Americans. This middle class growth was attributed both to upward
mobility from the working class and to what came to be called the inheritance of class, the
passing down of middle class professions and status from parents to their children. The
emphasis on class over race began to solidify as an ideology with the publication of W.J.
Wilsons The Declining Significance of Race in 1978, which posited that class had surpassed
race as the number one determinant of the life chances for blacks, and that young, college

educated blacks now had an equal or better chance than their white counterparts of
obtaining middle class jobs.

The social and political changes that allowed for this rise in upward mobility were
validated by a series of mandates and laws. In 1961, President Kennedy signed Executive
Order 10925 which outlawed overt discrimination in hiring based on race or ethnicity, and
this first draft of history was expanded upon by Lyndon B. Johnson with Executive Order
11246 in 1965, which called for equal employment opportunity, extending this to
government positions in executive agencies. These Orders were fully realized in the 1964
Civil Rights Act through the establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, the first official federal agency designed to enforce laws protecting American
employees from employment discrimination based on race and color, and eventually gender.
The number of African-Americans employed in federal positions grew dramatically in the
wake of this legislation.

While all of these gains represented significant progress for African Americans in the
Post-Civil Rights era, in the decades leading up to the present day, many of these gains have
receded or altogether dissipated. With the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs that often
boosted working class African Americans to the middle class, and a series of recessions that
hit black communities hardest, the racial income gap would widen so dramatically by 2011
that the wealth of white families would eclipse the wealth of black families twenty times
over. A data analysis by the Pew Research Center showed that the typical black household
had wealth of just $5,677, while the typical white household possessed $113,149 in wealth
(assets minus debts). This median net worth was even lower than it was in 1984, when the
typical black family had a median net worth of $6,679.

This brief history paints the picture of the black middle class as a social group that has
both flourished in the short fifty years following the victories of the Civil Rights era, yet has
also been met with many disadvantages. However, it is largely a sign of progress that a social
group that only accounted for 13% of the black population in 1960, accounted for nearly 40%
of the black population in 2009. If it can be said that public policy, further educational
attainment, and the civil rights movement largely lead to the surfacing of the black middle
class in the United States, how have the members of this social group contributed to further
developing it? It can be argued, as it was by sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, that once a black
man (or woman) achieves middle class status, his/her modus operandi is to get as far away
from working class and poor blacks as possible, both geographically and socially.

The Black Family on TV

In the decades following Civil Rights, television representations of African Americans

have broadened. The 1970s saw several diverse portrayals of the black family in sitcoms such
as Good Times, The Jeffersons, and the high point of this revolution in the representation of
the black family could be found in The Cosby Show, which ran for eight seasons from 1984 to
1992. The black family sitcom continued on its tear well into the 90s with shows such as
Family Matters and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, up to today, with series such as Everybody
Hates Chris and Black-ish. Besides these few series, however, many shows with majority
black casts never attained a mainstream audience, either finding a niche on startup networks
catering specifically to black viewers such as UPN, or facing cancellation on the established
Big 4.

While there has been a growth in shows with black casts marketed to black audiences
in the last forty years, there has been a dearth of black characters in leading roles on
primetime network television. In the past ten years, there have been very few black, Latino,
or Asian lead actors in a prime-time drama or comedy series marketed to a mass audience.
For example, the uptick in black families on television can be attributed to the relative rise in
social standing of African Americans and the greater opportunities for black writers,
directors, and actors, allowing producers such as Bill Cosby to flourish. The opportunities
have been far fewer for other minority groups however: the only primetime series featuring
an all Asian-American cast remains the ABC sitcom All-American Girl, which aired for one
season from 1994-1995.

A look at any recent minority-headed network series will reveal a passionate

champion for said series behind the scenes. Mexican-American actress Salma Hayek and
Cuban-American producer Silvio Horta brought the American adaptation of Ugly Betty to
ABC in 2006, which starred America Ferrera as the title character. The same would be true
for Scandal, which debuted as a midseason replacement on ABC in the Spring of 2012.
Created and executive produced by Shonda Rhimes, the show stands as one of the few
featuring an African-American lead in a race-neutral role, marketed to a mass audience.

Scandal, a political drama set in Washington D.C. and incorporating elements of soap
operas, spy capers, murder mysteries, and the legal drama, has become one of the most
popular prime-time television series in a very short amount of time. The series catapulted star
Kerry Washington to international stardom and garners several Emmy and Golden Globe
nominations each year. The show sparked controversy even before it debuted for several
reasons, the most notable being the casting of Washington in the lead role of Olivia Pope, the

first black female lead on a primetime series in over forty years, with Diahann Carroll being
the last black female actress to head a weekly TV series with sitcom Julia in 1968.

While Scandal has been met with some critical acclaim and has become a bonafide hit
for ABC, the series is not perceived by critics or viewers to be a quality show. In fact, the
show has been perceived as a guilty pleasure, a prime-time soap opera, and its efforts at
serious political pontificating are viewed almost as parody. The Olitz love affair between
Olivia and President Fitzgerald Grant remains the most salient aspect of the show among the
general public. The series follows a Communications Director named Olivia Pope who starts
her own crisis management firm called Olivia Pope and Associates (OPA), a group of young
Ivy-League educated attorneys who dub themselves gladiators. Olivia, referred to as a
fixer, was the Campaign Manager for sitting President Fitzgerald Grant and briefly worked
as his Communications Director.

Olivias professional and personal lives are often intertwined: she frequently finds
herself having to work with President Grant and First Lady Mellie on a professional level yet
also navigate the personal animosities wreaked by her adulterous affair with the President.
She finds herself reconciling between her role as a daughter and as a white hat in her
relationship with her father, the ruthless commander of a super-covert government operation
called B6-13. Although Scandal could be and often is written off as a piece of mere escapism,
the shows subtle grappling with race, gender, and class realities remains rare in a primetime
network show and indicative of a unique and alert voice that of Shonda Rhimes.

Race, Gender, and Class in Shonda Rhimes Scandal

As with many network dramas of this type, there are no poor or working class
characters primary, supporting, or even peripheral on Scandal, and so the show can be
viewed as a portrait of power politics as well as a performance of class. The series takes place
in the elite segment of Washington political society: at the White House, at the pristine offices
of OPA, at the monuments to American greatness such as the Capitol. Olivia Popes clients
fall into two categories: the rich, powerful, political elite, facing potential ruin due to an
impending scandal, and victims of this political system. Both of these client types appear
within the first couple of episodes. In the second episode, Olivia represents a Madam who
provided high-class escort services to high-powered clients, one of whom, John Keating, is to
be nominated for Supreme Court Justice. Olivia ends up saving Keatings nomination, and in
the same episode, takes another client under her wing Amanda Tanner, a young White
House aide who begins to talk of an affair with the President, then subsequently quits her job
and attempts suicide after being reprimanded by Olivia herself.

We begin to learn more about the background of Olivias gladiators. The Presidents
Chief of Staff Cyrus Beene tries to dig up dirt on Olivia and her associates Harrison, Abby,
Huck, and Quinn after it becomes clear Olivia will not give up Amanda Tanner as a client.
Beenes team finds that Harrison is former big-time car thief, Abby was married to a U.S.
Senator who beat her, Huck is a former deep C.I.A. assassin, and Quinn, according to
records, didnt exist until recently. When it comes to Olivia however, the head of Beenes
crack team only finds out that she had an affair with someone on the campaign trail,
remarking, Its a potential goldmine, because other than that Olivia Pope is purer than
Mother Theresa.

In the first season, the hyper-valorization of Olivia Pope represents part wishfulfillment on Shonda Rhimes behalf, but also as a validation of post-racial ideology. Olivia
Pope is not a woman, or a black woman, but a gladiator, a saint, purer than Mother
Theresa. In these early episodes, the audience is (mis)led, perhaps intentionally, to believe
that Olivia represents the crowning achievement of the American social experiment a
young, African-American woman, seemingly from a good family and background (read:
middle class), who has managed to build a name for herself and not just anywhere, but at
the top, as a defender and advocate of the rich, powerful, and overwhelmingly white. The fact
that Olivia is a black woman is not acknowledged in these early episodes, although her
gender and sexuality is affronted once it becomes clear that she is not a super woman, but
flawed. Shortly after the Presidents Chief of Staff learns of her affair with the President, he
accosts her at a state dinner. Blocking her path as she makes her way to a rendezvous with
Fitz, he has her escorted out, but not before telling her that she can write a book when shes
old titled The Presidents Whore.

In the second season, the writers begin to unravel the mythic Olivia Pope to reveal the
flawed human being behind the persona. Olivia is forced to deal with the repercussions of not
only carrying on an affair with a married man, but the President and the United States.
Although the ramifications are deservedly dire, the hostility directed towards Olivia is
undercurrented by a layer of racial and gender microaggressions. After the death of a
prominent civil rights leader and Pastor, his wife is distraught after learning of her husbands
fifteen-year affair. She is visited by First Lady Mellie, who in a moment of candid honesty,
tells her in so many words that the role of wife eclipses and invalidates the role of mistress.
You are his partner, she hisses, You are his wife! Some mistress doesnt change that.
Somewhere in all the cheating is the man that you married. And you are his wife!

This delineation between wife and mistress recalls a scene in the season one
finale in which Mellie lambasts Olivia for not doing her job, leading Fitz to sleep with
White House aide Amanda Tanner. I do my job! I smile, and I push him, and I make sure he
has what he needs, she states. I did my job! Why couldnt you do yours? Olivia gawks
back at her, horrified at what Mellie is insinuating - that her job is basically to fulfill her
husbands sexual needs. Im gonna need to take my husband back, she closes, Because
clearly, Im gonna have to do everything myself from now on. Mellie belittles Olivia, a
woman of equal intelligence and maybe even social status, by devaluing her significance to
Fitz and also by casting Olivia in the role of the seductive, loose Jezebel, who is worthy of
the title mistress, and eventually, whore, which she almostly gleefully hurls at Olivia at many
points throughout the series. While Mellies ire makes sense from a character point of view,
these displays of condescension imply a power play, in which Mellie attempts to degrade
Olivia by reminding her of her place beneath her.

Although Olivia is portrayed as someone who is highly respected and even feared, her
gender, race, and sexuality can sometimes work against her in very subtle and subconscious
ways. In her romantic relationships, she is met with contempt and suspicion by the powerful
men she gravitates towards. In the first half of the second season, Olivia is courted by her
former fiance, an African-American Senator by the name of Edison Davis. Olivia, who is
just not that into him, continues to evade him and his questions about her romantic life after
him. Eventually, he puts the pieces together and confronts her, asking her directly if she was
sleeping with the President. Olivia goes on the defensive, calling his assumption sexist. In
the last three minutes, you have called me a criminal, a whore, an idiot, and a liar! she
clarifies, before telling him they are done and booting him out of her apartment.

Olivias relationship with Fitzgerald Grant is also similarly charged at times. He is

often aggressive with Olivia, pulling her to him mid-speech, forcing himself upon her in
elevators, and lunging in for uninvited kisses. The way he treats Olivia stands in stark
contrast to his wife Mellie, whom viewers are left to believe is sexually frigid after having
been raped by Fitzgeralds own father. But this lack of a sexual relationship between the
President and the First Lady also maintains Mellies virtue and purity. Olivia is sexually
available, Mellie is not. Olivia placates Fitz while Mellie challenges him at every turn. It is
easy to see why Fitz is drawn to Olivia. Fitz allure to Olivia, in turn, is largely based on his
authority, power, and status, but also his paternal nature.

In later seasons we learn of Olivias conflicted (to say the least) relationship with her
father, which creates context for all of her relationships with other men, especially Fitzgerald.
Her yearning for the love of a man the love she never received from her father is
actualized in her relationship with Fitzgerald, and later Jake Ballard. The nature of their
relationship is illuminated early in the second season. In a flash back scene, Olivia, wracked
with guilt after sleeping with Fitz the night of the Inauguration, tells him that she is not this
person and that she is feeling a little Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson about all of this.
Olivia, who has worked her entire life to counteract negative and stereotypical images,
grapples with choices she feels are casting her in this exact light. This person here stands in
for that kind of black female. Later, when Olivia meets Fitz at the Rose Garden, he calls
her out on the Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson comment. I smile at her (Mellie) and I take
off my clothes for you, she fires back, I wait for you, I watch for you! You own me, I
belong to you!

10

This scene contrasts with one a year later in season three, after we are introduced to
Olivias father, Eli/Rowan Pope, the head of a covert government operation called B6-13
which specializes in espionage, torture, assasination and other types of subterfuge. Eli Pope,
who has kidnapped rogue agent Jake Ballard, Olivias love interest post-Fitz, returns Jake to
her bloody and battered. Olivia doesnt understand why her father let him go. If youre still
alive, its because he still owns you, its because youre still useful and hes gonna find a way
to use you against me, she explains, Dont feel bad about it. he still owns me too. Her
relationships with men, especially Fitzgerald, are based on this captor/captive dynamic, as
this possessive patronage is the only model for love that Olivia knows.

Eli and Fitzgerald represent two different types of patriarchy, and this fact is no more
evident than in one powerful scene (S. 3, Ep. 10) in which Fitz has Eli brought in, in chains
no less, to help find Olivias mother Maya Pope, an international terrorist whom Olivia
unwittingly put on a plane out of the country. Maya, held prisoner by Eli under an alias for
twenty-two years, was long believed dead. There is a clear power play among these two men
in this moment. Fitzgerald represents priviledged hegemonic power. He is a heterosexual
white man from a prominent family who rose to power largely due to nepotism. Eli/Rowan,
the poor or working class black kid who earned his place through nearly impossible odds,
represents the patriarchy of the black family, diligent, self-determined, and for someone of
Elis generation, deeply suspicious and contemptuous of the system. The fact that Fitz plays
up his sexual relationship with Olivia in such a blunt, even vulgar fashion, highlights this.
Im screwing her, you know your daughter, the President brashly tells Eli. Eli in turn
attacks him, trashing his achievements based on the fact that they were merely handed to him.
Youve been coddled and cared for, pampered and hugged. For you, its always summertime,
and the living is easy. You. Are. A. Boy. He continues, I am a man. I have worked for every

11

single thing I have ever received, I have fought, and scraped, and bled for every inch of
ground I walk on. I was the first in my family to go to college. My daughter went to boarding
school with the children of kings!

We are introduced to Eli Pope at the beginning of season three as Olivia is identified
as the Presidents mistress. To weather the scandal, Eli demands that Olivia go away for a
while until it blows over. The two argue in an airplane hangar as Eli tries to convince Olivia
to board the aircraft. Did I not raise you for better? he berates her, How many times have I
told you? You have to be what!? Olivia answers reluctantly, Twice as good. Twice as
good as them to get half of what they have! Eli is disgusted with Olivia not so much for
carrying on an affair with the President, but for not leveraging her status at the White House
into a position of real power. You know to aim higher, he scolds, at the very least, you
could have aimed for Chief of Staff, Secretary of State! First Lady? Do you have to be so
mediocre?

Eli Pope lives in an Us vs. Them world. A child of the 60s, he is more racially
conscious than his daughter, who is a product of the liberal, post-racial era. We learn that
Eli/Rowan was a working class kid who worked hard and got into Princeton. Eli was perhaps
one of those young black men who benefitted from the immediate gains of the Civil Rights
Era and went onto to build a solid upper middle class life for himself and his family. His
frustration with Olivia lies in her blindless, or unwillingness, to see the sacrifices made to
grant her a life of relative ease and material means. In Elis eyes, Olivia has become a black
bourgeoise, willfully ignorant of where she comes from, and in danger of losing her identity
in her quest to gain acceptance and validation in a world that was never designed for her.

12

Elis story, like Olivias, is an assimilation narrative, detailing the psychological chaos
wrought upon a minority by trying to pass or become part of the majority. Eli represents
the failure of this, while Olivia is the success. Of course, Eli is a man of great power, and
he has achieved material success, but his work as Command of the countrys top secret
government organization goes unheralded. Olivias work, on the other hand, is very visible,
her name is known, and she is respected for the most part. Eli remains in the shadows, but
because he has managed to infiltrate the system and subvert it from the inside, he feels that
his integrity remains intact. In his eyes, Olivia is a traitor, choosing them over us. In a
recent episode (season four), he demands that Olivia acknowledge this, telling her he has
spent a lifetime clearing her path of debris and shining their shoes so that she may always
see her reflection. You never, ever choose one of them over me again, he threatens.

One point that is hammered home repeatedly is that Olivia is just like her father,
despite her protestations. In recent episodes, she has ordered a hit on a rogue Secret Service
Agent, seen her mother re-incarcerated, and even ordered the (failed) capture and execution
of her own father. Perhaps, at the root of Olivias intense fear and hatred of her father, is the
fear of herself, and everything that entails. Olivias immersion in the elite world of
Washington D.C. then acts as an escape from the reality of her own life. You have forsaken
me, Eli tells Olivia, essentially disowning her, You wanted to stand in the sun, in the bright,
white light. Those people that youve chosen over me, you do not see who they are, what they
want. Those people are not your people, and you will never be one of them. Perhaps, with all
ties to her family severed, and the realization of her dream of standing in the sun, Olivia
can once and for all wear the White Hat. As Frantz Fanon once wrote, For the black
(wo)man, there is only one destiny. And it is white.

13