How Degrassi: The Next Generation and its fandom perpetuated r* cist stereotypes surrounding black girls and women with Liberty Van Zandt
What this post is for: To critique how Degrassi, a series that regularly prides itself on its "diversity", actually treated its marginalized characters throughout their time on the show.
What this post is NOT for: Liberty criticism or hate of any kind. If I see that in the comments, the comments will be deleted and you will be blocked. Since I'm also critiquing several non black characters and their relationships with Liberty, I will not tolerate negative comments from fans of those characters because you can't handle criticism of your fav.
If you are not black, this post is for you to learn and reflect, not to argue and attempt to center your perspective on r*cism over mine. Even if you ARE black, this post is not for you to argue with me and try to defend a 2000s majority yt Canadian tv drama because you're uneducated on the harmful ways our people tend to be portrayed in media.
R* cist and coOns will be blocked.
#1: The Sapphire (AKA The Angry Black Woman)
The show: Liberty was often depicted as the villain in nonblack characters' storylines. In Weird Science, she antagonizes Emma during the science fair project and accuses her of having favoritism from the judges due to Snake, who was dating Emma's mom Spike, being a judge.
Emma, who had to revise her science fair project at the last minute, is praised by judges for her creativity and innovation while Liberty's project is deemed as boring and is dismissed quite quickly on screen by Snake and the other judges. We're as the the viewers are meant to root for Emma and sympathize with her as winning the science fair over Liberty and take joy in Liberty being knocked down a peg. While Liberty's genius, hard work, and ambition are established parts of her character, this storyline existed to humble Liberty and put Emma, the t female lead, on a higher pedestal than her. Liberty could be smart but she could NEVER be smarter than Emma, and it was a frequent trend on the show to have Emma be praised by other characters for being intelligent and strong minded while Liberty was mocked and demonized for the same traits.
In U Got The Look, Liberty shows up in the episode to be jealous of Manny getting attention from her crush on JT. She snitches to Raditch that Manny is walking around with her thong showing because of that. We're meant to see Liberty as unlikable and annoying and root for Manny and JT as a couple. Even though Emma and Manny knew about Liberty's crush on JT, they gleefully gush about his crush on Manny to her face and Emma carelessly asks Liberty if she agrees on it being the cutest thing. Liberty's feelings in this episode are put down and discarded by the narrative to instead center Emma and Manny's.
During Liberty's pregnancy storyline, she is initally treated as the main antagonist and villain while JT, her yt love interest, is the hero. When we find out in Foolin that Liberty is pregnant, it is told primarily through JT's POV who sees her as angry and controlling. Instead of the show showing a nuanced, humanized depiction of how scared and stressed Liberty felt about being pregnant at 15 and how badly it was affecting her life, we instead are only shown how the news affects T and we are supposed to cheer when JT dumps Liberty at the end of the episode. JT's flaws of being immature, selfish, and overly obsessed with s*x to the point where he was bragging about their s*x life to Toby without her consent were downplayed and instead Liberty was demonized for her reaction and mistrust of JT's behavior. Toby tells JT in the episode that he needed to assert dominance over Liberty as the man in their relationship and this is viewed as a positive for the show. The villainization continues in Weddings, Parties, and Everything and it's not until JT doesn't give up on trying to support Liberty that she softens up and gives him a chance. However the show continues to prioritize JT's feelings over Liberty's during the rest of the pregnancy storyline to the point where she's more of a plot device than a human being.
By being black, female, school president, and coming from a very strict and controlling upper class household, Liberty had much more to lose than JT yet JT was depicted as the one who was losing everything by her being pregnant. The white male, who misused the wrong condom on purpose to satisfy his fragile and selfish ego, is the one who deserved sympathy for getting his black girlfriend pregnant instead of the black girlfriend herself according to the Degrassi writers.
Liberty is only allowed one episode where her grief of having to give her and J's baby up for adoption is shown through her POV before she's shoved back into the villain role in S6, depicted as mean and bitter as JT seemingly finds new love with Mia. Despite JT degrading Liberty by comparing her to oatmeal and lint and boasting about Mia being more physically attractive and desirable than Liberty, despite JT pushing for a daycare to be built at Degrassi for Mia and her daughter when he never did the same for him and Liberty when she was pregnant with his child, and despite JT blaming Liberty and her parents for her giving their son up for adoption without taking accountability for his own actions in the storyline that led to her making that decision, the show treats him as innocent in his intentions in this storyline while Liberty gets a nasty moment of telling Mia about JT's drug dealing and su*cide attempt. When JT calls her miserable at the end of the episode, we're meant to root for him and cheer him on with finding new love for Mia. Mia as his new yt love interest, is placed on a way higher pedestal than Liberty and the pure, sweet innocent yt girl vs the angry, resentful black girl dichotomy in enforced between the two female characters for JT's benefit. JT's relationship as it was written on Degrassi, was a poorly written dynamic that coddled and infantilized the yt male while demonizing and adultifying the black female.
How does the Degrassi fandom perpetuate the Sapphire stereotype against Liberty?
Degrassi fans over the past twenty years have commonly bashed Liberty as a b*tch, overly judgmental, rude, selfish, and aggressive while being fans of other Degrassi characters who were guilty of sharing the same traits as her. Emma stans call Liberty out for her moments of being judgmental and mean while ignoring or downplaying all of Emma's moments on the show of judgmental and mean, especially towards Liberty. Emma stans make frequent excuses for Emma's poor treatment of other people and just like the show, often act as if Emma was a moral paragon of virtue who only always had the best intentions for everyone and any bad actions on her end can be justified due to her trauma. Emma frequently talked down to Liberty, rolled her eyes in her presence, dismissed and neglected her as a friend, and infamously manipulated her ex boyfriend into thinking she wanted him back just so Liberty couldn't have him. Emma stans reinforce a narrative of white girls being innocent and pure while black girls are evil and angry.
Manny stans bash Liberty for her one moment of jealousy towards her over JT even though Liberty eventually got over that and helped push Manny and JT together. Liberty would go on to have many other moments of supporting Manny and being at her side but this doesManny stans ignore Manny's role in the Chris incident where she exposed Liberty's crush on Chris behind her back to Emma and mockingly compared Liberty to a rapid wolverine to paint Manny as an innocent saint who could do no anything wrong to any of her friends.
Manny stans reinforce the model minority when it comes to how Asian characters are perceived compared to black female characters.
JT stans, even ones who claim to like his relationship with Liberty, never acknowledge his faults in their romance are and instead blame everything that went wrong with their relationship on Liberty. They cry about how she "treated" him during S5-6, frequently calling her a "b"tch" and claiming she abused him while making excuses for how JT often treated her. JT spent multiple seasons in deep denial of his feelings for Liberty and openly saw her as beneath him until he was out of romantic options with other female characters. JT spoke about their s*x life in a disrespectful way to Toby, ruined her trust in him and put their lives at risk by selling drigs behind her back to provide for their baby, and used degrading terms to mock her to Toby and Mia. JT was not a saint, but in the eyes of his fans, you would think he was.
While Liberty had her moments of being too harsh on JT, she still stood up for him against her own family, was willing to sacrifice her homelife to make a new life for him and their baby, and got her dad to help JT legally get off from the bad situation he got himself into by selling dr*gs from his pharmacy. Liberty from the beginning to the end, supported JT and his worth on multiple occasions even before they got together while JT didn't do anything for her until they got together. His stans ignore all of this to paint Liberty as a betch who didn't deserve JT, and regularly use him being a child as an excuse for his negative moments. In the eyes of the average JT Yorke fan, JT was forever a 12 year old boy who could do wrong while Liberty did everything wrong even though she was a child like he was, enforcing the adultification of black girls.
#2: The Jezebel
In the only main storyline that Liberty had in S7, she develops feelings for Emma's boyfriend Damian and hooks up with him behind Emma's back, causing everyone in their class to get angry at Liberty until she shows remorse at graduation.
Damian is the third of Emma's love interests that Liberty showed interest in but because of Emma still dating him at the time of their fling, Liberty is objectively in the wrong for this incident, putting her in the promiscuous Jezebel role against the pure, good spirited yt female lead.
How does the fandom perpetuate the Jezebel stereotype against Liberty?
Liberty is frequently slut shamed and bashed for her one storyline of being the side chick by stans of characters who have done the same thing. Emma stans consider Liberty irredeemable for
"being obsessed with Emma's men" while not acknowledging that Emma hooked up with Jay behind Alex's back, and dated two of Manny's love interests herself, even marrying one of them. Manny stans also slut shame Liberty for "being obsessed with Emma's men" even though Manny infamously had a fling with Craig behind Ashley's back and ended up with the guy who gave Emma an ST.
Emma and Manny had a whole argumentin S8 over them pursuing the same guys yet Degrassi fans only single out Liberty for being interested in her friend's former love interests.
Liberty is also bashed and demonized for her crush on JT, with fans commonly accusing her of sexually harassing him, not having the same criticism for JT, who aggressively pursued other female characters himself until he got with Liberty.
#3: The Mammy
The show: Liberty was frequently put into episodes for the sole purpose of supporting Emma, Manny, and JT in their pursuits rather than her own, always providing advice or standing loyally in the background for these characters who rarely reciprocated. Whenever Liberty was going through Struggles, you hardly saw Emma and Manny around even though they were supposed to be her best friends. This was at its most egregious during Liberty's pregnancy storyline as never did we see a scene onscreen of Emma and Manny reaching out to support and guide her. Liberty calls Manny out on them not being that close in Rock This Town, but this scene is quickly brushed over as in subsequent episodes, Liberty is still playing the supportive friend who is always unconditionally supporting her nonblack best friends while we don't see them supporting her through any of her own potential struggles. They didn't even care about her birthday until they could use it as opportunity to mess around with their love interests at her party.
When it came to JT, we saw Liberty support him when he lied to her about being g*y, Liberty support him being good at sewing, Liberty helping T pass his final exams, Liberty show up to the premiere of T's commercial with Supafly Fries, Liberty help JT get with Manny despite JT openly making it known on multiple occasions how annoying and abhorrent he found her. How many moments do we see of JT supporting Liberty before they finally get together in Voices Carry?
While he supported her as the writer and co-director of Castle Dracula and joined her in her initial protests of Raditch trying to change the play around, he got cold feet when Liberty sang a song of protest to Raditch and it was on Liberty to stand up for herself. While he did support her during their pregnancy storyline, it was due to obligation of her being pregnant with his son due to them being broken up for most of it. The next time JT supports Liberty through something, it's him getting the idea to have everyone celebrate her birthdayc..d.and he des that very same episode.
Continued: Liberty was a regular member of the student council and was later voted president two consecutive seasons in a role, but we had almost no storylines from her POV of being involved with student council beyond her one storyline with Ashley in S1. Whereas with other school presidents, who had main storylines showing them struggling as leaders of the student body, Liberty had none. Throughout every season of her being involved in student council, she is just there as a supportive background character for other characters and instead of her position as school president being a way to develop her as a person, it just exists to keep her in a continued servant role for other students. Despite having one storyline in S1 of feeling frustrated with feeling not appreciated for her hard work by Ashley, she never gets frustrated about her lack of appreciation again and never challenges anyone about it. She's happy and pleased with being the one everyone depends on even though she could rarely depend on anyone herself.
How does the Degrassi fandom play into the Mammy stereotype with Liberty?
In discussions of how Liberty was "judgmental and thought she was better than everyone", it's never acknowledged how many times she actually was supportive of other characters at the expense of her own needs and desires. Fans actually get mad at her for not working while pregnant.
The fandom expected her to be working while 15 and heavily pregnant, never criticizing Jenna and Clare for the same thing. Jenna never did a thing to financially support herself and her unborn child while she was pregnant, and wasn't interested in getting a job even after she gave birth. Clare also never showed any interest in financially supporting herself and her baby. The expectation that Liberty should have been working while heavily pregnant while Jenna and Clare didn't have to is rooted in the expectation that black girls and women are obligated to be hard working, wage slaves while white girls and women don't have to.
The show: despite hints on the show that Liberty had multiple insecurities regarding her disability, her being perceived as ugly and undesirable by boys, and the pressure she felt by her parents and the school, we rarely saw these struggles shown in depth through her POV. Her having dyscalculia is a plot device for Emma and it's only brought up one other time in another Emma centered episode. Boys finding her undesirable was often used as comic relief. Her pregnancy, the period where she was at her most vulnerable, was shown primarily through JT's POV while she was just there in the background. While the writers may have had her get pregnant for the shock value, with how little prominence she had in her own pregnancy, it seems like it existed just to cater to harmful stereotypes surrounding black mothers and to humble her. Her grief after giving her baby up for adoption is given prominence in one episode. We barely see how JT's tragic de*th affects her after one episode. We get one storyline of her experiencing r*cism from a sorority in S8 and nothing else. Despite all of the mistreatment and trauma Liberty experiences on the show, unlike other female characters, she doesn't get multiple storylines allowing her to process, heal, and grow from these struggles. Instead she's primarily supporting other characters. This enforces that black girls and women are too strong to ever be vulnerable like everyone else, we must always be strong and be silent about our own problems....
How does the fandom perpetuate the Strong Black Woman stereotype against Liberty?
Liberty is rarely brought up in discussions of Degrassi Characters who have gone through the worst on the show.
Fans also primarily praise her for her confidence and strength and nothing else, ignoring aspects of her character that wasn't always confident and strong. This shallow view of her character over time puts her in a box and it's hard to find Degrassi fans who have a more nuanced depiction of her character.
#5 The Black Best Friend
As already stated in the Mammy slide, Liberty was more often than not, just there in episodes to support her nonblack friends. There were barely any main storylines she had of her own.
S1: 1 plot which was Basketball Diaries
S2: 1 plot which was Relax
S3: 1 plot which was Accidents Will Happen
S4: 1 plot which was Voices Carry
S5: 1 plot, Total Eclipse of The Heart, and it's towards the end of the season
S6: 1 plot which was The Bitterest Pill
S7: 2 plots, Don't Stop Believin' and We Built This City, and they're both at the end of the season
S8: 1 plot which was Didn't We Almost Have It All
For the most part, Liberty was just silly comic relief or the resident punching bag for other characters in episodes. While this was better than what most of the other female characters got, this is still lacking compared to the multiple storylines per season that Emma, Manny, Paige, Ellie, Darcy, Mia, and other nonblack female characters got. Manny and Emma got big movies sending off their characters with big, epic romantic storylines and them finally achieving the life that they wanted. Liberty got nothing but a crummy cameo in Degrassi Takes Manhattan and it's the last we see of her character until Next Class.
Liberty was more of a plot device than a fully realized character. She wasn't even allowed to have main friendships with other female characters outside of Emma and Manny and her friendship with Toby was mostly in the background until he started crushing on her after JT dled.
How does the Degrassi Fandom perpetuate The Black Best
Friend stereotype against Liberty?
Liberty is not talked about in this fandom usually unless it's about her relationships with other characters and fan content, whether its fanfics, fanart, or edits, for Liberty is relatively scarce compared to everyone else. Liberty is only liked because of Jiberty, not because of people genuinely liking her character for herself. Outside of Jiberty, Liberty's existence isn't acknowledged by the fandom unless it's to make fun of her or hate on her.
While Liberty Van Zandt is my favorite Degrassi Character, she was not given as much respect, dignity, and depth by the writers compared to her nonblack peers. She was more of a plot device for other characters' development than her own developed character and that's because of the writers' racial bias when it came to black characters.
Despite this series portraying itself as a beacon of diversity in teen media, with how Liberty was treated in TNG, the diversity was shallow and performative.
She had multiple, racist harmful ideals of black girls slapped onto her through every season of the show.
The fandom's perception of her is also generally r*cist and terrible.
Liberty deserved better.
