How do you think that Liberty's pregnancy arc would have gone if she was white? I think about this a lot. People always cite her as an exception when people mention the show's terrible treatment of black girls, but if anything, Liberty's treatment on the show only proves the "Degrassi writers hate black girls" theory right.
I feel like people say that about her because she wasn’t made into a “sidekick” stereotype character, but like there’s barely any liberty based storylines that are either a) not mostly about JT or b) not meant to make her look bad/silly. She is different within their treatment of black girls in that she was still considered part of the main cast and she didn’t have a stereotyped character type but they still did her very dirty. I’m not saying they had to make her a perfect angelic character but they hardly ever gave her much development. Her best plots were her trying to deal with giving up her baby and the sorority plotline, the first one being a b-plot and the second one being an example of interesting plotlines they could have given her but just like with the first round of college storylines they kind of went through it as fast as possible.
I feel like a better way to handle her pregnancy arc would have been to:
1) have had more foreshadowing (manny getting pregnant during her naive trysts with craig makes sense, randomly throwing it out there that liberty the most strict rule-following, extremely prepared character in the show is pregnant and avoiding a proper response to that...we need a bit more CONTEXT)
2) have even more focus on her trying to deal with being the school’s pregnant student/disappointing her parents/disappointing herself ( the stuff with jt was interesting but it just went WAAAAAAY out there but focusing it on liberty and all the pressure and judgement she would face would be 100x more relatable as thats something actual teens go through) (also comparing with manny again it makes sense she doesnt think of her pregnancy much because she didn’t go through with it or want a child like liberty did)
3) make her dealing with giving up the baby something more prevalent in the seasons after that (i feel like a lot of people just dont GET why liberty is the way she is in season 6 because they just make her an obstacle for jt than someone who’s dealing with a lot of different things and its even worse to me that after he’s killed its kinda just quickly ran through and not really fully explored...she lost a baby AND the guy she loved in what was probably just a years time)
it also sucks because i feel like sarah did a good job portraying liberty too like she pulled off that complex personality liberty had
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