Diversity Without Pity #5 | DriveTime Commercials

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Click the video below to hear the full commercial.

Ah, to be a black woman and a nerd.

I saw this commercial, and knew it had to be a part of my DWP series. It depicts a driver as a black man, two pitchpeople as women that they used to be friends in high school, and one of them is a black woman. Played by comedic actress and MADtv alum Nicole Randall Johnson, she’s sweet, smart, and awkward. To some her portrayal may not seem important, as it is so brief. Plus, it’s about selling used cars, not depicting the inner life of an Awkward Black Girl. But it’s important to someone like me.

In my current line of work, I often task myself with finding new ways of depicting students of color. If we are, say, highlighting AP/IB enrollment gaps between high-achieving African American students and their white peers,  I want to find images of bookish, nerdish, students of color to break up the monotony of generic human figures and stock photos of cute kids smiling at the camera.

Fast Fact: We Have Work To Do!

In a Google of “black nerd” I would find Steve Urkel, even Donald Glover a.k.a. Childish Gambino. But Google “black female nerd,” and … all I can say is it’s NSFW. So, anytime a black woman comedian/actor/performer who also self-describes as nerd, I look for her. I look for women like Issa Rae or Aisha Tyler. And when I look for Latina nerds, it’s pretty much America Ferrera as Ugly Betty.

It’s more labor, because it requires me to seek out images that are so rare to find. This also reveals the dearth of images to chose from. But it pays off in that it adds one more image to pull from my mental Rolodex. Nicole’s portrayal of someone uncool, adds another black female character to imagine; an archetype to build on. It also puts forth another ideal of nerdom.

Diversity Without Pity is a blog series from IDSL, highlighting media that uses smart design, and considers the diversity of it’s casting without selling the viewer or consumer, short.