By: Sthefany Flores<\/p>\n
Last Sunday, during the 67th annual Emmys, Viola Davis became the first African American woman to win Best Actress in a Drama Series. Davis\u2019s moving speech sparked the conversation of the limited opportunities for women of color in television.<\/p>\n
Kemeshia Randle, Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at Gardner-Webb, sees Davis\u2019s win as a positive step for African Americans in popular media. \u201cI hope to be optimistic and say there will be more diversity,\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>said Randle. \u201cThings have progressed slowly\u2026I think the change may happen. But it won\u2019t be something that we can look forward to unless there are actual black women who are writing these characters.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis\u2019s speech, although praised by many, has been criticized by others. Nancy Lee Grahn, a soap opera star best known for her leading role in \u201cGeneral Hospital\u201d expressed her opposition on Twitter by saying \u201cI\u2019m a f\u2014\u2014 actress for 40 yrs. None of us get respect or opportunity we deserve. Emmys not venue 4 racial opportunity. ALL women belittled.” She then added, \u201cI think she\u2019s the bees knees but she\u2019s elite of TC performers. Brilliant as she is. She has never been discriminated against.\u201d<\/p>\n Grahn received a lot of backlash for her tweets. She apologized, and her tweets have since been deleted.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that she published these tweets shows that she comes from a place of privilege,\u201d said Randle in reaction to Grahn\u2019s tweets. \u201cEven though she deleted them later, she didn\u2019t realize that what she said affected someone negatively. [That] is problematic in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Yaya Richardson, an actress in Gardner-Webb\u2019s theatre department saw Davis\u2019s win as a step forward in diversifying acting roles. \u201cI feel like her winning will open more roles away from stereotypes, and maybe we might be able to win more awards due to our broader range in roles.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Sthefany Flores Last Sunday, during the 67th annual Emmys, Viola Davis became the first African American woman to win Best Actress in a Drama Series. Davis\u2019s moving speech sparked the conversation of the limited […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[177,175,176,178,86,174,179],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-feature","tag-african-american-studies","tag-emmys","tag-kemeshia-randle","tag-nancy-lee-grahn","tag-sthefany-flores","tag-viola-davis","tag-yaya-richardson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}