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Celeste Ng, author of the 2017 novel Little Fires Everywhere (the basis for the new Hulu series), recently stated in a Buzzfeed article that the TV show is a challenge to “well-intentioned white women”.
It seems that Ng believes that the best way to have a conversation about race in modern America is for oppressed minorities to chastise white people for being white.
But the show isn’t trying to start a conversation about race.
It’s trying to preach at its audience with an explicit sociopolitical view, one that states that white women, even those who are “well-intentioned”, are guilty of privilege and should “be better”.
Imagine the outrage that would be leveled at a straight white male creator claiming that his latest work was designed to challenge well-intentioned black women.
The outrage would be completely justified. It would be an example of a member of one racial and sexual group making a broad generalization about a different racial and sexual group, and appointing himself the one to show them the way.
