As a child I hated that my hair was not blonde and straight. I wished for the sleek swish of a ponytail that my own tightly coiled kinks could never manage. Then I saw the Cheesestrings advert.
Amongst the smiling white faces scoffing down strands of cheese was a black girl. Her tumble of curls was piled high on her head with two plaits in place of the blunt-edged fringe that was the playground trend of the day. The last time my mother had tried to style my hair in a similar fashion, I had fretted that it looked stupid and tried to force it into some other eurocentric style, but in the wake of this advert I went to school holding my head, and my 'afropuff', high with pride.
While some advertisers have come to the slow realisation that the disposable income of the world's black and brown population is worth courting, other elements of our Western entertainment industry are still #sowhite. Films made by and starring black people can still feel like unicorns in the wild, but the past couple of years have been pretty good for those of us who don't appreciate a delusional film industry that believes the only stories worth telling involve a monochromatic cast and crew. So when, for the second year in a row, the impeccable craft of black actors, directors and producers has been so obviously overlooked at the Oscars, our exasperated eye rolls have turned into vocal frustration.
We're not asking for tokenistic representation, we're asking for real and tangible recognition. The problem is that the creative output by talented and qualified non-white professionals is being devalued and wilfully overlooked. Creed and Straight Outta Compton are two of 2015's biggest box office successes, and both garnered critical acclaim, but while the black directors, the black writers, and the black cast were overlooked by the Academy, they saw it fit to nominate the white supporting actor and the previously unimpressive and unheard of duo of white writers for their work on these films. The cast of Straight Outta Compton – the highest grossing music biopic of all time – was not even invited to the awards ceremony.
Thinking about the spectrum of black experience today, from being overlooked for jobs, promotions and leadership positions, to receiving harsher punishments from school rooms through to courtrooms, to the fact that black people are more likely to die in interactions with the police, the reality is that I've given birth to my precious little boy in a society that, even if he is outstanding, will not value him. And let me be clear, rightful recognition in elite institutions will not eradicate other forms of injustice, but that recognition still matters in a very concrete sense. It is that recognition that will open up doors for other black creative professionals, and it is that acknowledgement that will bring funding and opportunities and put to bed the insidious myth that projects with black headliners, and positive stories with black headliners in particular, "do not do well" and so are not worth doing at all. Recognition matters.
As much as I hope to be a strong source of affirmation and positivity in my son's life, I can't deny that messages emanating from mass media and popular culture are a force to be reckoned with. Modern parenting and childhood are hard enough without the burden of explaining and compensating for the uneven balance that permeate our society at every level. As an adult, navigating a world filled with double standards, unspoken hierarchies and the nuance of prejudice is exhausting enough, but the thought of preparing an innocent child for that journey ties my stomach in knots.
"I have to work three times harder because I'm black, because I'm a woman, and because I have an African accent." I must have been around ten years old when my mother said that, but her words have never left me. It's 2016 and I'm preparing myself to echo the words passed down from one black generation to another: "you have to work ten times harder to get half as far". In an ideal world my son would be confident that there is no arena where he, as a black boy or black man, cannot succeed, but I look at the industry I love and the one that I work in and find it hard to believe that myself. One day I'll have to explain to my son that even if he works his hardest to make something amazing, it's likely that the only recognition his labour will receive will be handed to whichever white person is standing closest to him.