The Other White Meat
blair underwood and those confounding television hook-ups
2008-03-05
By Ronda Racha Penrice

Music producer Polow Da Don (Fergie’s “Glamourous”, Ciara’s “Promise”) got tempers flaring last year during an interview with Complex Magazine when he proclaimed himself “King of the White Girls”. I can’t weigh in on Polow but I do know, on TV this season, Blair Underwood is, hands down, “King of the White Girls”.

First, there was ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money where he plays Simon Elder, a billionaire raised in Russia. Whether the Darlings, the Carringtons of the new millennium, are playing him or he’s playing them has yet to be determined; one thing is certain, however: he and Karen Darling know each other in the flesh.

Karen Darling’s not the only one getting the carnal treatment from Mr. Underwood. On The New Adventures of Old Christine, when our Blair, known here as the schoolteacher Mr. Harris, hooks up with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, better known as Elaine from Seinfeld, CBS made sure everyone knew by hyping the ebony-and-ivory coupling in its promo spots.

Switching over to cable, Underwood’s character Alex on HBO’s In Treatment is a Navy pilot who killed innocent civilians during his stint in Iraq and is in “treatment” to get a handle on his feelings. One man talking to another man doesn’t usually lead to a heterosexual interracial sexual encounter but Blair, excuse me Alex, accidentally runs into his therapist’s sexy female patient, Laura and fast forward that casual meeting to bumping-n-grinding.

Just when did our Blair Underwood, whom some of us first met eons ago as the fine brother counselor on L.A. Law in the late 1980s, early 1990s, become television’s white chick magnet? More than likely Mr. Underwood’s jungle fever got a boost from his 2002 role in Full Frontal where he and Julia Roberts got a little something going. Perhaps that role sold Sex and the City on the idea of bringing him on as Miranda’s sexy love interest Dr. Robert Leeds, team doctor for the New York Knicks, in 2003.

Like wine, Blair is getting finer with age, and he’s never down and out: Schoolteacher, navy pilot, NBA team doctor, he’s the cream of the crop. So why aren’t Black women more up in arms? Perhaps most of us are like me and don’t particularly care about a brother dating white women (although I do admit, in my experience, that their motivations typically have a lot to do with societal standards of beauty that constantly devalue ours.) Still, it’s hard to ignore Blair Underwood bedding down white women on three different networks.

A majority of us probably aren’t mad with him because he’s a really good actor. That’s especially clear on In Treatment where he and respected actor Gabriel Byrne, who plays the therapist, go toe to toe. Also, for the most part, Blair’s characters don’t seem to chase white women exclusively. With his characters, you get the feeling that it can go either way, that they are equal opportunity daters. Plus, Blair’s characters, mired in a white-only world that few Black women penetrate, is an actual reality for some Black men, so his character’s romantic trysts aren’t exactly a stretch. They are signs of the times, good and bad.

White men hooking up with Black women isn’t such a big deal. For Black men, in real life, and in scripted format, hooking up with white women has too often resulted in court cases and death. In real life, Marcus Dixon faced ten years jail time for having consensual sex with a fellow teenager, who happened to be white. Granted Blair’s characters aren’t turning up in places like Rome, Georgia where Marcus got caught up, but these consequences are still real.

So, it’s refreshing in one sense that a brother can be involved with a white woman with little consequence but it’s frustrating too. Why can’t Blair’s dynamic characters have dynamic Black women by their side? Blair is actually married to a Black woman and so is Barack Obama, who is in line to become the most powerful man in this nation and arguably the world. Television’s fascination with the Black man-white woman scenario only adds to the further marginalization of Black women.

We shouldn’t trip about Blair holding down television’s title as “King of the White Girls” but we should be piping mad that Black women can’t get in on the action. We shouldn’t always be relegated to having Pookie’s back when he’s facing jail time. We can be rich and conniving too. We can fall for our child’s sexy homeroom teacher or give temporary comfort to a confused Navy pilot. We do it in real life; it would be nice to see it on the small screen too: Us with our brothers, our partners in love and life. The truth is that’s the reality that’s become too hot for TV.

Veteran freelance writer and self-diagnosed television junkie Ronda Racha Penrice is the author of African American History For Dummies, which includes a chapter on film and television.

Photo courtesy HBO