'Black Monday' Season 2 Episode 6 critiques racism and capitalism through Dawn's moral dilemma
Spoilers for ‘Black Monday’ Season 2 Episode 6 ‘Arthur Ponzarelli’
“Capitalism repurposed race and racism. By dividing human beings, conceptually and practically, into intrinsically different subgroups,” wrote Marxist economist Richard D Wolff in an essay, “Capitalism’s defenders could explain and justify why its economic benefits and burdens were so unequally distributed (both within countries and globally).”
At the heart of the Showtime’s Wall Street dark comedy series ‘Black Monday’ lies the fault lines between racism and capitalism and the extraordinary cost at which African Americans could rise to positions of economic and political power. And that quandary was uncomfortably visible in Season 2’s sixth episode.
Dawn Towner’s (Regina Hall) mother, played by Vanessa Bell Calloway, introduces her to Marcus Wainwright III (Dulé Hill), the head of the African American Scholarship Fund, who wants Dawn to invest his $30 million. You can imagine the moral conundrum that Dawn faces, knowing that she would be putting the Scholarship Fund’s money (and invariably the future of thousands of black students) at risk by allowing the touch of her fraud organization to taint it. It was encapsulated by Mo Monroe’s (Don Cheadle) poignant remark at Dawn: “So, y’all robbing [N-word]s now.”
Both Dawn and Mo faced hardships climbing up the steep ladder of Wall Street. And while both had the stigma of race working against them, Dawn also had her special hoops to overcome on account of her gender. To not take the AASF’s money would be to lose her footing. To take the money, however, would make sure many others would have the same opportunity as she.
But this quandary is quadrupled by her mother. At the AASF event where she would announce taking the fund for investment, Dawn confessed to her mother that she could not do it. She couldn’t risk the future of so many black kids just for her own financial gain. Her mother’s rationalization, however, was one she couldn’t expect.
Her mother argues that she had sacrificed much to make sure Dawn was in this position today. Right and wrong were complicated ideas and not a simple binary. Dawn realizes that she would have to juggle a little more, but essentially, she needed to do this.
A 2014 Pew Research study found that white American families have, on average, 13 times the wealth of an average black family. The gulf of disparity between the two races can only be attributed to capitalism. But how does one bridge that? Through capitalism, that chooses to put African Americans on a more even footing with white Americans? Or through guilt and self-defeating altruism on the part of black capitalists that would seldom be reciprocated by their white counterparts?
‘Black Monday’ may be a comedy, and it is a hilarious one, but often, the show’s writing produces an excellent critique of racism and capitalism, on levels that aren’t normally witnessed on television. Dawn’s conundrum is perhaps as close to a nuanced critique of both race and capitalism as can be managed through a non-written format.
‘Black Monday’ airs Sundays on Showtime at 10 pm ET.