Issa Rae told to include white character in shows so people would ‘care’

nypost.com:

told Mic that she had the candid conversation with the colleague a decade ago, just as she began working on her YouTube series “Awkward Black Girl.” “From the jump in creating the show, it was put in my mind that you had to have a white character to be a bridge, and for people to care, for it to get awards, for it to be considered worthy of the television canon,” she said.According to Rae, the colleague stated: “Girl, if you want this s–t to set off to the next level, you got to put a white character in there, then white people will care about it, then NPR is going to write about your s–t and it’ll blow up.”Rae said she heeded the advice and added a white character to the cast of “Awkward Black Girl” before it was released in 2011.