Fox’s Empire has been pretty quiet this season, but sadly, all good things must come to an end. The latest episode has brought back the series’ blatant leftist politics by claiming people are thrown in prison simply for being black or brown.
The October 31 episode “The Death of Grief” has eldest Lyon son Andre (Trai Byers) struggling to adjust to life after two years in prison. He attempts to help his old prison friends but still faces the stigma from his prison sentence and his family’s recent financial struggles. On top of his college friends leaving him high and dry and no family fortune to fall back on, he begins to break down from the pressure.
His mother Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) steps in to solve his problems from her own personal experience after 17 years in prison. Then she drops this whopper of a statement regarding minorities in jail.
Andre: I wanted to put money on the books for some of the people that I-I left behind. Inside.
Cookie: Yeah, okay. You can't help but feel guilty for leaving folk behind, baby.
Andre: My college friends, they called them-- called us-- animals.
Cookie: Well, did you tell those ignorant asses that just because someone makes a mistake, doesn't make them less than human? And what about the people inside that didn't do a damn thing but be born black or brown? You know what? I'm not, I'm not doing this today.
Do the writers of Empire seriously believe that people are arrested for the crime of being black or brown? She doesn't even address the commonly used drug prosecution argument. It's just straight to cops arresting black and brown people just for being born.
Empire should really just stick to avoiding politics.
