This is an actual dialogue from last night's episode of Glee:
Mercedes: You may not be a minority, but you certainly get how it feels sometimes.
Quinn: 9 months... you've had to deal with this your whole life. People making assumptions, calling you names. I seriously can't understand why you don't feel like yelling at people all the time.
Mercedes: What's the point in getting angry?
Quinn: Because it's infuriating - I hate all the looks at school, don't even get me started on my mom.
Mercedes: You're not angry, you're hurt. You just need someplace safe where you can get through all that anger.
I don't even know where to start. I understand the show's intention - to connect the feelings of ostacism experienced by Mercedes, an African American student, and Quinn, an Aryan subarbanite blonde who has been thrust into the realm of the undesirable by getting knocked up... But I think even my attempt at neutrally describing the exchange in my last sentence demonstrates that there is something essentially wrong about the way the writers attempted to connect these two characters.
The fundamental problem is this: Mercedes was born Black and has experienced life in a certain way because of that fact; Quinn elected not to use a rubber and now gets made fun of because she made a mistake. The dialogue above infers that both women have been punished, but the characters' experiences are far from the same. The odd thing is, I can totally imagine this dialogue occurring in real life- some ignorant blond trying to connect her pain to that of someone who is treated differently because of something entirely out of their control... It's just strange (though, not out of the ordinary) to see it on my television.
Another thing that irks me is Mercedes' response with: "What's the point of getting angry?" She has a right to be angry. Quinn didn't pay attention in sex-ed, she's in a terrible situation, but it will be over in a few months... If Mercedes feels like her life has been affected negatively by her race, then she absolutely has a right to be angry, and in a lot of ways, a duty. By her saying there's no point in being angry, it's implying that there's no point in trying to change the reasons why she feels victimized in the first place.
While I understand that it's somewhat ridiculous to engage in a serious debate about the social implications of dialogue on a show on which 90% of the plot borders on the absurd, this scene really bothered me. I was already souring on the show in general, with the musical numbers of the 2nd half of the season not quite holding my attention to compensate for the 28 minutes of filler when they have the characters speak... I think I'm over it.
