All We Are Gonna Say About Basketball Wives

Amen to this. “I’m not saying we have to create shows that only paint a pretty picture
about who we are, but there should be a balance and most of all some
integrity to the shows we create.” I’m not seeing “the balance.”

I remember when VH1 would play an edited version of TLC’s “Waterfall.” My how things change.

The women on BW somehow manages to make the women on Real Housewives of Atlanta look classy. LOL has there been full comparisons of those shows?

BW is so over-the-top with the fighting and arguing that it’s actually gotten boring, predictable, and I can’t take them seriously. Shaunie can’t have it both ways. YOU are “friends” with these people,  YOU let the cameras roll and watch them run amok, then complain about how WE need to have more integrity? Get off your high horse and realize that you play a role in this imbalance as much as Flava Fla, New York, and Chance does. Try giving us a reason to believe that you’re interesting outside of wet weaves from drink being thrown and Gucci dressed being ripped apart.

And what is the actual “wife” count on this show anyway?

I think the real challenge is that while a good percentage of people on reality TV act ridiculous, we are the ones who get labelled and stereotyped by this appalling behavior.  I mean, those Real Housewife shows (with the exception of the Atlanta one) don’t really show much that is positive about the white women featured on them, but their vapidity, shallowness, ignorance, etc. is not attributed to the entirety of their race, nor are those negative traits blamed on their “whiteness” (and yet when you think about it, it is their white privilege that gives them those lifestyles).
So we have to live with comments about how “I’d like black women if they weren’t so ghetto/if I could find a classy one” and I feel like despite being nothing like the women on these shows, I’m probably labelled before I open my mouth thanks to the ubiquity of these images.

Shaunie needs to sit down.  #1, VH-1 is the channel that brought us such black women affirming shows like “Flavor of Love” and “Charm School”.

#2, nobody would be watching BW if Tami weren’t on there fighting everybody.  If it was just Shaunie and Suzie and Jennifer sitting around talking, that show would be cancelled.

The difference between watching black women fight on TV and watching white women fight on TV is that black women is ALWAYS seen as examples of how black women are in real life. Since we live in a culture that idolizes television as if it was God Himself, people will learn about the world from the magic box and virtually nothing else.

I agree with Olivia, there is NO balance. Shows like this are nothing more than a racist’s fantasy broadcasted for a naive audience. 

I watch this show, unfortunately, it is a bit of a guilty pleasure.  But then again, I tend to watch these things to sate my thirst for watching humans interact for cameras.  Whatever, I’m weird.  LOL Either way, I agree that the fights are trite and old and I ask myself how women who are all older than I am (I’m 29) manage to get into the kind of fisticuffs I used to engage in when I was in grade school. 

One thing I wanted to address was how this show makes black women look to others and I have to say that as I grow older I care less.  I say this, not because it doesn’t matter.  In one way it does, but being around this block called life and seeing it time and time again in media and in real life, the kind of people who would stereotype all black women based on BW or RHOA or BGC are the kind of people that would stereotype us for anything.   These women don’t represent me or my race and if they happen to have people believe that they do in order to justify their prejudices, then that has nothing to do with me.

You are probably right. But it doesn’t keep me from disliking this show.

Shaunie just needs to completely stop this charade. 
Honestly, she’s the Executive Producer. This is her creation and mastermind. She says there should be a balance, but as  viewer I’ve seen her gently push situations beyond the brink. Last season on the finale at their goodbye dinner, she urged Evelyn to “confess” to Tami about having slept with her ex-husband. At dinner. Right that instance. Why would anyone think that pulling a friend aside in a crowded restaurant and confessing something like that would be a good idea? If you stand to make a profit from the ensuing drama, it’s a GREAT idea. This was the instance that the “Non-MF-Factor” was born of. And that hurt and drama lingered on to the season reunion and right into the next season. And Shaunie took that check to the bank and cashed it. The only balance she’s concerned with is her account balance. 

Yeah, I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t watch that much reality tv, I confess, but where is there physical violence on a daily basis between participants? I only remember the table tipping from RHONJ and I remember Teresa getting a lot of stick for that.

To the extent that the word “ghetto” is extractable, these women are ghetto… as hell.

I don’t think you understood my point or what is on the line here at all.  When Theresa tipped over the table, that is not seen as an indictmen upon white women and how they ALL act.  But when black women act crazy on TV, it is added to the myth that we are uncouth, unladylike, and ghetto. 

A positive image of a black woman (e.g. Michelle Obama) is not seen as representative of what black women are really like.  A negative image is. 

All of the Lindsay Lohans,  Snookis,  and Theresas in the WORLD will not knock the white woman off her her pedestal in white and American society.  I mean, a white woman can get her start making homeade PORN and is still treated like a lady and can become rich and famous from that. She will have people defending her VIRTUE even if her first appearance in the public eye came in the sex industry.  Do you think that a black woman could do that?  I’m not arguing for anyone being able to do it, but again, the negative image and “low-class” behavior could be in the actual PAST of the white woman and she still will not suffer for it.  People who look like her will not be stereotyped because of it.    

As a black woman, I’ve HEARD the comments that people make about what “black” people are like, and it’s not pretty.  The internet and the proliferation of blogs and anonymous coments lets me READ even more;  you know, the stuff that is only shared in “private.”