Lena Dunham still has a racial blindspot, and itâs time to acknowledge it. Last week, she faced the wrath of Twitter when she implied that black NFL player Odell Beckham Jr. ignored her at an event because she wasnât f**kable. But this isnât the first time sheâs jumped to conclusions about the inner thoughts and intentions of famous black men.
Consider the snippet below from a 2013 interview Dunham did with Vulture. In it, Dunham laments a missed opportunity to connect with Drake, after he presumably ignored the chance for a one-on-one conversation with her for Interview magazine.
âI didnât expect Drake to care, although I know Drake has a crush on Kat Dennings; thatâs his type,â Dunham said. âI had a real moment with him, and it wasnât reciprocated. But if I run into him now, Iâm gonna be nice.â
Whatâs fascinating here is that Dunham is trying to be self-deprecating and funny and charming, but instead all thatâs coming across is an extreme projection of her insecurities onto someone that she doesnât know, as well as a profound sense of entitlement.
Her statements also reveal an air of judgement, like, âI thought you were different, but youâre not interested in me, so youâre just like all the other misogynistic black rappers who I canât connect with.â
Dunhamâs thoughts on Drake take on an interesting new significance in light of her Lenny Letter conversation with Amy Schumer, posted on Sept. 2. Neither Dunham nor Schumer come across terribly well in the conversation. Schumer doggedly defends her professional and personal relationship with Kurt Metgzer, one of the writers on her currently-on-hiatus show who has been criticized for championing rape jokes and rapists, and harassing women online.
Dunham cosigns, complaining about âthis new world in which women arenât just supposed to be protected from actions, theyâre supposed to be protected from language.â (As if the language men like Metzger use doesnât actively perpetuate rape and rape culture.)
But the part of the candid interview that got the most attention was Dunhamâs commentary on her interactions â or lack thereof â with football player Odell Beckham Jr. during the 2016 Met Gala.
âIt was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards,â Dunham told Schumer, referencing Odellâs apparent indifference to her presence.
She added: âThe vibe was very much like, âDo I want to f**k it? Is it wearing a ⊠yep, itâs wearing a tuxedo. Iâm going to go back to my cell phone.ââ
The backlash was swift. Social media users, most of them black, called out Dunhamâs sense of entitlement and her assumptions about Beckhamâs thought-process â assumptions that conjured up racialized stereotypes about black male sexuality.
Dunhamâs initial response on Twitter was to dismiss the criticism as the typical âoutrage machineâ of the Internet at work. She explained that the story was about her insecurity over being an âaverage-bodiedâ woman surrounded by supermodels, and that the story was ânot an assumption about who he is or an expectation of sexual attention.â
But, of course, thatâs exactly what the story was â even if it was indeed fueled by personal insecurity. Dunham chose to publicly dive into Odell Beckham Jr.âs head, and spell out what she believed his thought-process to be; a thought-process that was almost animalistic in nature (âDo I want to f**k it?â).
There is an enduring stereotype of black men in America as hyper-sexual, aggressive, and predatory. These stereotypes are also what have fueled this countryâs long, dark history of white women falsely accusing black men of sexual assault and rape. Dunhamâs comments, whether intentionally or not, played into this. Itâs a fact she herself admitted in an apology posted to Instagram after carefully considering âvalid criticism,â criticism she initially dismissed as blind outrage:
Itâs a pretty decent apology, but one that came after two days of pushing Dunham to reconsider dismissing the online conversation altogether. In the age of the Internet, of âcall out culture,â and the so-called âoutrage machine,â it isnât easy to be a highly visible person who makes mistakes, and who is learning. But what the backlash against Dunham demonstrates is that no one is as âwokeâ as they may think they are.
This isnât to say that Dunham runs around showing off how conscious or aware she is of feminist issues, or that she believes she has it all figured out. Part of her brand, of course, is her imperfection, the sense that she unabashedly does not have it all figured out.
But Dunham has a racial blindspot, and not just about Odell Beckham Jr. Sheâs been criticized for writing a creepily orientalist essay about Japan in 2011, and weirdly tweeting about molesting an âAfrican-American ratâ in 2010. In 2013, she was silent for a ridiculously long time after comedian Lisa Lampenelli tweeted a selfie with her using the n-word, and initially defended her silence by saying she didnât engage in âTwitter debates.â
Of course, since âGirlsâ first dropped in 2012 and was met with criticism over its all-white cast, Dunham has tried. Sheâs introduced black characters (to varying degrees of success: see the epic failure of Donald Glover as her black Republican boyfriend) on the show. And with her latest venture, Lenny Letter, sheâs provided a platform and a space for black women to talk about issues that affect black women. And thatâs great. But thereâs always more work to do.
Her initial reluctance to engage, her dismissal of the criticism and her insistence that her story had no racial implications whatsoever was her way of saying that her perspective and her truth was more relevant and valid than anyone elseâs. Itâs great that she eventually understood where the complaints were coming from, but itâs unfortunate that that didnât occur to her in the first place.
As Culturess writer Ayesha Naqvi points out, Dunhamâs experiences as an average-sized white woman seem to âdefine the limit of [her] empathy.â The Drake and Odell Beckham Jr. stories are evidence of that. Thereâs certainly nothing wrong with having a specific perspective or point of view. But Dunham was so focused on positioning herself as an outsider because she isnât a size 2, even though in many respects sheâs very much an insider, that she didnât consider all the other ways one can feel like an outsider (for instance, being a 23-year-old black dude from Baton Rouge, Louisiana who has never attended an event quite as overwhelmingly glamorous as the Met Gala).
Lena Dunham is probably not a bad person. Thereâs nothing wrong with acknowledging the reality of white entitlement, even if it complicates a carefully cultivated narrative of oppression which revolves largely around being an average-bodied white woman. This reality doesnât mean Dunham hasnât dealt with misogyny, and it doesnât negate her insecurities and fears. But by her own admission, her lack of self-awareness, coupled with her privilege and platform, can lead to the sort of tone-deaf characterizations of black men that are ultimately more harmful than they may seem.
Part of being a public figure means accepting that your learning is going to take place on a public stage. Dunham and other celebrities who make (even unintentionally) harmful comments should be held responsible for their words â especially when those words perpetuate damaging ideas about real human beings. Dunham is entitled to her own perspective and story, but not to the minds and thoughts of the black men around her.