Chele Belle's Lair: Gateway to the Lepidopteran id

ikariusrising answered: I watch the show and I refer to it as the Thomas & Sally Show. She is a concubines. Is this Love, I doubt if a Brother did it would it be ok?

I am glad you are watching a show called Scandal. You are obviously NOT watching the show called Scandal that comes on Thursday nights at 10PM EDT on the ABC network. If you were watching the same show I am watching you’d know the Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson slander does not stand. Neither does the concubine title. If Olivia Pope, who does not live with the president, is a concubine than either your definition or Merriam-Webster’s definition are not defining the same thing. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary a concubine is ‘a woman who cohabits with a man without being legally married to him’. Keeping in mind how many women live and have children with men and do not ever get married to them it’s safe to say that concubine-age in America, especially Black America, is the thing to do.
The Sally Hemings slander is lazy and erroneous. Whether or not you agree with the relationship of Olivia Pope and President Fitzgerald Grant…one thing remains: Olivia Pope is a free woman. She is owned by no one. She lives in her own home. She owns a business. She is the property of no one. Sally Hemings was an inherited slave. ‘In 1787, the 14-year-old Sally Hemings was chosen to accompany Jefferson’s youngest daughter Mary (Polly) to Paris, where the widowed Jefferson was serving as the United States Ambassador to France. Hemings spent two years there. Hemings and Jefferson are believed to have begun a sexual relationship either in France or soon after their return to Monticello. Hemings had six children of record born into slavery; four survived to adulthood and were noted for their resemblance to Jefferson. Sally Hemings remained a domestic servant in Jefferson’s house until his death.’ If President Fitzgerald Grant had died from the assassin’s bullets in season 2 no one would have inherited Olivia Pope. No one.
Finally the passion, the desperate torrid passion, that Fitzgerald Grant shows for Olivia Pope would not be something seen exhibited by a Black male. For example, Norm Lewis as Senator Edison Davis, a good looking high achieving Black man, had about as much passion as wet loaves of bread. A brother plays it cool, a brother will lose no face even in the face of loving a Black woman. A brother is too consumed with his own image and how he is seen by other Black men to love as hard and reckless as Fitzgerald Grant has done for Olivia Pope. However, if said woman was a White woman or some other ethnic group…well maybe so.
I see now that the critiques of this series have nothing to do with some so-called morally wrong concept and everything to do with keeping Black women under the thumb of race-based politics. Adultery is a bad thing. But so is shooting folks down in the street, selling drugs, pimping women and young girls or disobeying your parents even as they teach you right from wrong. Olivia Pope’s sin is a personal failing on her part. She is a free Black American woman choosing to accept [with some limits] the love and admiration of the president of the United States of America. She is not owned…by anyone…and that’s what leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of many. She is not holding it down for a brother. She had a brother and when he could not hold a candle to the White man she sent him on his way. She is not knowingly anyone’s slave, bitch, side piece, concubine, Sally Hemings or victim. A non-victimized Black woman who is not carrying the water for any and all Black males is a dangerous being. Maybe even more dangerous than Willie Lynch or some other boogeyman from Konspiracy minded Negro folks.