@thecolormeb: January 2015

Yessssss! The women of Orange Is the New Black showed up and showed out at the SAG Awards. The show's cast took home many awards, and looked absolutely fabulous! Such a powerful moment for women of color. OITNB is a show about a woman serving a sentence in a federal prison. This primarily female, diverse cast is hysterical, so you should watch.

Photo Credit: Jezebel

Furthermore, I encourage you to watch a couple episodes because they're addressing issues that relate to incarceration and implicitly people of color. According to the NAACP's Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, 1 million of the United States's 2.3 million prisoners were black people. Black men alone account for 700,000 of the 2,000,000 people in US prisons.

Photo Credit: ACLU

For more information about the prison industrial complex, I highly recommend Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. In season 1 of OITNB, after years in prison, Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson (played by the fabulous Danielle Brooks) gains freedom.

Taystee ends up back in jail before the end of the season because she has no resources to help adjust to freedom in her familiar surroundings. High recidivism rates are a problem in urban centers like San Francisco and Cleveland; but in today's media, we only hear one side of that story. According to "a 2012 report by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, just over 65% of those released from California’s prison system return within three years."

The story sounds like this. "Person of color goes to jail. POC gets out. POC gets arrested and is in jail again." In states with a three strikes law, the story could read:

"POC goes to jail for stealing swishers. POC is imprisoned for ridiculous amount of time for robbery. POC gets out. POC is disenfranchised and cannot find a job with a felony on their record. POC steals bread to eat or sells weed to make money. POC goes back to jail and will probably go again after that. 3rd strike. Life."

Sorry, had to speed it up at the end because I'm tired of hearing this narrative. While the story is quite simplistic and somewhat silly, you get the idea. You don't hear about stories like Taystee. What is it like for black women when they're released from prison? I don't know, but this show has given me a lot to further research. The show has also given me a lot to celebrate, like the perseverance and creativity of women of color in extreme circumstances; and I'm happy the SAG Awards honored them. This is a huge moment in history because shows like OITNB and Blackish are redefining our representation in mainstream media. These hilarious story lines tell stories that people of color tell at their kitchen tables or at a family function, inherently beginning to breakdown the stereotypes about people of color.

The women of OITNB are so talented and STUNNING! Check out their SAG fashion below: