Friends has long been criticized for its lack of diversity and Friends co-creator, Marta Kauffman, says that she regrets that she didn’t know any better at the time. The creator recently pledged $4 million to her alma mater, Brandeis University, to fund an endowed chair in the school’s African and African-American studies department, one of the oldest in the country. Find her apology after the jump!
“It took me a long time to begin to understand how I internalized systemic racism. I’ve been working really hard to become an ally, an anti-racist. And this seemed to me to be a way that I could participate in the conversation from a white woman’s perspective. I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years. Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”
I don’t get this. If “Friends” is a reasonable depiction of a group of four people, why does one have to “apologize”? It wasn’t racist. This isn’t Star Trek, pure fantasy where all humanoids, cyborgs get along (although the captains are usually Americans and male, until Discovery where the future seems bizarrely gynocentric and LGBTQ. I always ask, if the future Earth is so “blind” to today’s “races”, why is there not complete mixing in a few hundred years to make people look copper toned, taller?