The Forgotten

Unless you've been living in an isolated cabin west of nowhere the past couple decades, you have certainly noticed the frenzied identity essentialism takeover of popular entertainment. Seemingly every offering, from television to movies to streaming to the commercials that pay for it all, is a display of "diversity" of race, ethnicity, orientation, gender, culture, and religion. I scare-quote "diversity" here because the diversity contract has certain mandates, limitations, and exclusions.

Chief among those is that diverse characters are never equal in quality, goodness, or stature. Hero vs villain, competent vs incompetent, good vs evil, morally upright vs suspect, enlightened vs benighted, informed vs ignorant... whatever the dichotomy of the story, we know purely from identities who is who. When was the last time you saw a black lesbian as the evil mastermind vying against a straight white hero?

Does this reflect reality? Of course not. There are good and bad people in every identity box. What you are does not constrain or define who you are.