Howdy ho! We’re back with another recap of Season Two of Woke, the show based on Keith Knight‘s comix. Last time, Keef (Lamorne Morris) learned that you need to do a little research before starting a non profit, and Gunther (Blake Anderson) learned what a washcloth is for. As always, this Woke recap for Season Two, Episode Five, “Who’s Your Kin” contains all the spoilers.
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“That’s my oat milk, Blue Ivy”
We open at the apartment. Ayana (Sasheer Zamata) is tiptoeing out of the house, while Gunther snores and sleep talks on the couch. He wakes up, though, and asks where she’s going.
Well, her last staff member quit and she’s gotta go to the office to write the whole issue herself. Ayana is nothing if not tenacious. Gunther tells her to wait a second, ’cause he’s gotten her a gift. One guess as to what it is!
Actually, it’s really sweet, he’s pre-rolled her some joints so she doesn’t have to smoke her own inventory. She thanks him, but declines, since weed makes her relax and she’s got to work. He’s still got her covered! Gunther hands her some white powder, which is not cocaine, but “Gunther Powder.” Ayana takes the weed; she’s got this.
Unfortunately, when she gets to the office, she finds an eviction notice on the door.
Now, Ayana has two days to raise $15,000. It’s not the eviction notice itself that is a surprise to Ayana, but the timing of it. She thought she had more time, but her landlord recently raised the rent.
There’s a lot of contributing factors to her debt. Sure, the rent, but printing costs, advertisers pulling from print newspapers … Keef suggests Ayana work from home, considering she’s a staff of one. Ayana wants to know how she’s supposed to work from Gunther’s bedroom. Wooooow, I mean, on the one hand, I get it, but also woooow.
“If I leave, they’re gonna replace it with some Pilates studio for dogs.”
But, part of the reason Ayana is holding on tight is that The Bay Arean is the last Black-owned business in that neighborhood. She is absolutely correct in wanting to save her business. I just don’t like that she’s completely shutting down her friends in their efforts to help her.
There’s a time and place to just want sympathy or empathy from people. When you’re gonna be evicted in two days is not that time. She won’t even hear Clovis (T. Murph) out; Keef wants to go to Laura (Aimee Garcia) and Ayana scoffs.
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Ayana knew this was coming, and I appreciate her idealism, but there are literally grants and organizations that assist Black woman-owned businesses. She is an intelligent, resourceful and informed Black woman. Even for all her stubbornness, I just don’t buy that she wouldn’t have at least sought out other avenues by now.
Anyway, Keef bristles at the implication that Laura owns him and wants to mansplain his financial relationship with Laura. Gunther asks why Ayana doesn’t just take out a bank loan or ask her parents for money. Off his friends’ reactions, he steps back and asks how Black people get out of financial binds.
Keef responds, “We go into poverty.” Clovis says, “Feature on a Drake mixtape.” Ayana brings up rent parties, which were popular during the Harlem Renaissance. She realizes she could throw one to save her business.
Oh, I love this next part. Ayana makes a list of all the things she needs to do for the party: send out E-vites, go to the liquor store, play bouncer, DJ, etc. You can see her spiraling as she lists it off. Keef stops her and says, “Or, you could let us help you.”
Ayana would rather do it on her own because when she lets others help her, they always mess it up, and she always has to redo it anyway. She’s fine. She’s got this. Clovis stops her. She’s not fine. She accepts their help.
This is so, so important. Black women face unique, systemic oppressions and pressures that often cause them to feel alone against the world. This article by A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez is just the most very basic primer on the subject. I’d also like to direct you to the Loveland Foundation, which, as a large part of its work, helps young Black women access therapy.
“Yeah, I fall asleep to it every single night.”
Later, at an interview, Keef reveals that the KKP has successfully distributed 1,000 shoes in SF. Laura “spoils” that they’re soon gonna be expanding into Oakland. Shucks. Oh no. The journalist (Kathryn Meksavanh) just got an exclusive.
Also, Laura has a surprise for Keef. She’s pulled some strings and he’s gonna be a guest on a KQED show called Who’s Your Kin? (It’s basically Who Do You Think You Are?). Keef is stoked! Legend has it that one of his ancestors led a slave rebellion. Also, Luna Johnson (Laiyana Zo Davis) is gonna be in the episode with him.
Unfortunately, the taping is the same night as Ayana’s party. Keef actually considers skipping the show. When Keef goes to talk to Ayana about the situation, she suggests he do live drawings of the party to auction off and he counter offers giving her originals of his Bay Arean cartoons.
So, Keef tells her he can’t go and exactly why, and Ayana says she’s cool with it in a way that indicates she’s totally not. Again, I get it, but I also don’t? Keef is turning into a bit of a jerk, but it’s not like he’s skipping out for something arbitrary.
The next night at the taping, Keef finds out that his segment is second, but that he’ll be sitting on stage next to Luna for her whole segment. Laura also wants to know if he can cry on command.
He meets Luna, who won’t return his handshake and tells him she’s gotta go do a chakra-cleansing ritual to prepare. Keef, on the other hand, is gonna watch a scene from Boyz in the Hood so that he’ll be able to cry.
“How’d my party get so gentrified?”
At The Bay Arean, Gunther is playing bartender. He explains to Clovis that he tried to find a Black-owned liquor store and couldn’t, so he bought “Black alcohols” instead. (Side-note, Woke did its research; there doesn’t seem to be a Black-owned liquor store in SF, but here’s a list of all the Black-owned businesses in the city.)
Gunther won’t give Clovis any of his stereotypical (but correct, according to Clovis) alcohol yet, since he doesn’t have a drink ticket. Just then, Ayana walks in dressed in full 1920s garb (“putting the ‘bae’ in Josephine Baker“).
And, OMG KEEF! He forgot to give the group his art pieces for auction. Not cool. Ayana brushes it off and tells Clovis to let her patrons in. Clovis notes that her readers are punctual AF, which can only mean that …
Yep. They’re all white. Or as Gunther says, “They’re really putting the ‘Aryan’ into The Bay Arean.” Ayana is HORRIFIED by the fact that her party resembles “2020s Harlem” more than “1920s Harlem.”
Ayana and Clovis try to blame this situation on Keef having posted the party on his socials. Ayana is not going to allow Keef’s people to ruin her party before her true readership arrives. She even notes that all the people of color, who she assumes are her true readership, are huddled away in a corner.
“Gentle whispers are the most powerful.”
Meanwhile, at Who’s Your Kin?, which is hosted by Darque Noir (Nathan Lee Graham) from last season, Luna is crying, saying she heard the ancestors’ whispers in utero. Darque Noir laps it up and ends Luna’s segment by telling us she’s related to Zora Neale Hurston.
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I’m confused because I thought Keef was supposed to be on stage during Luna’s segment, but no worries. Anyway, when he goes on stage, Luna won’t give up the hot seat to him. When Keef tells Darque Noir it’s great to see them again, they say they’ve never met before.
Darque Noir says their genealogists traced Keef’s family back six generations. And then, in what is clearly a trap, they ask Keef what he knows of his family. Keef says like most Black Americans, The Atlantic slave trade violently erased most of his family history.
Keef goes on to say that like Luna, his ancestry fuels his activism. Darque Noir asks how Keef would feel to learn that his ancestors were emancipated long before the Civil War. At first, Keef inserts his cry here, because his family was free. Then, Darque Noir says, “Yes, Keef, you come from a long line of “[Offensive terms for Black people], Minstrels and Uncle Toms.”
Keef is in shock, but it’s time for a commercial break. You know, I’m really always fascinated by work that looks at how marginalized groups can be toxic within since it’s also a symptom of systemic oppression. There was no reason for Darque Noir to dump this on Keef other than to knock him down.
“My principles is all I have left.” / “That’s because you’re not taking their money.”
Back at the party, Ayana’s created a VIP section for people of color. A white guy (Jonathan Runyon) comes up and asks how he can get in. She tells him he can’t, and he immediately gets it’s because he’s white. He takes it in stride, saying it’s cool, and that “reverse racism” goes with the theme of her party. O-K.
Ayana tells him that reverse racism does not exist and that if he read her paper, he’d know that. He tries to backtrack. But, Ayana’s not listening. She’s livid.
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Ayana goes to the bar and asks a white woman what year redlining ended in SF. When the woman just stares at her, Ayana assumes she doesn’t know and snatches the drink out of her hand. Gunther asks Ayana what she’s doing. She’s about to make an announcement, that’s what.
Ayana has decided that people who want to order a drink from the bar will now be required to pass a literacy test about the Black history of SF, you know, like ones Black people did to be able to vote during Jim Crow.
Clovis and Gunther think she’s just shooting herself in the foot, but Ayana is a gale-force wind who will die upon the hill of her principles.
“Wow. He looks just like you.”
Back at Who’s Your Kin?, Darque Noir has more atom bombs for Keef — his great-great-great-grandfather owned five slaves. Keef rationalizes it by mentioning that it was common for free slaves to buy family members on paper to set them free. I wanted to find links to drop in here, but I couldn’t find info about manumission in this context, which, unfortunately, is not surprising.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happened in Keef’s family. His family was among those working on slave patrols. Also, as with anything of this nature, emancipated Black people owning Black slaves deserves a more nuanced conversation. (Look how I could find info on that.)
Keef begs for Darque Noir to stop, but they’re moving on. Keef’s great-great-great-great-grandfather led a fifty-slave rebellion that ended in the death of the plantation owner. This is the ancestor Keef is proud of … until Darque Noir adds that he turned over most of those slaves to a richer white slave owner for-profit and kept some of them for himself for his own “sexual amusement.” Yeesh.
Umm. Is this even legal? I get that it’s not exactly slander, since they seem to have evidence (how?), but can you air this without a person’s consent?
Oh but the nightmare continues. Keef’s great-great-uncle reported Harriet Tubman to a slave patrol, but no worries, ’cause Tubman shot the man. Keef looks over at Luna, who’s crying about all the pain that Keef’s family caused.
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Ugh. Besides the complete unlikelihood that all of this could happen in one family, none of that history happened in a vacuum. Furthermore, it doesn’t undermine the good that Keef does. As awful as this is, it isn’t the same as white people saying “well I didn’t own slaves.”
Oh, and also, after the commercial break, Darque Noir is going to tell the story of how Keef’s great-great-grandfather left his Black wife for the plantation owner’s white daughter. Keef excuses himself to go to the bathroom.
Luna doesn’t think Keef is returning, and Darque Noir quips that Keef won’t be able to come back from these revelations anyway. Right. So why tear someone down who’s doing something good for the community? Ugh, eff systemic racism.
“If you don’t read The Bay Arean, GTFO.”
Meanwhile, at Ayana’s party, she notices all of “Keef’s people” have drinks. She checks in with Gunther who tells her that they were able to answer her questions. It doesn’t compute for Ayana. She yells to cut the music.
Then, she goes up on stage to yell that the party is for Bay Arean readers only. The crowd cheers. She tells non-readers to GTFO and the crowd toasts back. But no one leaves … Finally, Ayana gets it. Then, Clovis asks if he needs to leave since he doesn’t actually read her paper.
Keef finally arrives at Ayana’s party, where she’s sitting in a corner, drinking straight from a bottle. Meanwhile, Laura’s blowing up his phone, trying to figure out if he’s OK.
Keef lies to Ayana and tells her he realized her party was more important than the TV show. He didn’t even go to the taping, he says. Oh, and he’s brought the art he promised. She doesn’t care; she’s too upset that her readers are all white. Ayana asks what it says about her that all her readers are white?
Keef gently reminds her that there are very few Black people in San Francisco and “all seven of them” are at the party anyway. Ayana wonders if she should just leave like the rest of her staff. He tells her that she can’t leave — she’s the last Black woman in San Francisco.
Keef goes on to say that history doesn’t matter, it’s the future that does. Ayana looks at him like he’s high, but she listens. He tells her that things she can’t control shouldn’t define her and that her paper is about challenging the status quo. I mean, “Who cares if one of your readers’ ancestors owned a slave or two?”
Gunther interrupts their bonding moment to let them know they surpassed their goal — they raised $22,475. Ayana thought she’d blown it, but at one point, Gunther stopped doing the literacy test and began charging white people triple. Ayana and Keef worry that might not be legal, but Gunther says he’d called it reparations and the white people got “weirdly into it.”
Laura is still blowing up Keef’s phone and he excuses himself to grab a drink. The bottles (Nicole Byer and Eddie Griffin) start talking to him. He says he’s not responsible for his ancestors, and they tell him running away is a white response — he needs to speak up. Plus, everyone’s gonna find out he lied about not shooting the episode.
So, Keef calls Laura and orders her to use her contacts to get the episode pulled. Then, he starts a live stream, lying that he’s been at the party all night ’cause he’d never give up on his friends. Oh, Keef.
Was Keef this flawed last season? I don’t remember. In any case, it’s an interesting choice. I really enjoyed the complexities of the main characters’ reactions and behaviors in this episode. Even if I didn’t agree with Darque Noir’s choices, it created an interesting dynamic. And I think it will cause Keef to spiral.
One other thing: as this show opens up to talk about issues of homelessness and Ayana becomes a more central character, it feels strange to me that queerness isn’t really a part of the conversation. Like, if as an individual character Ayana priorities her identity as a Black woman over any sexual identity, no biggie, but for Woke not to engage with queer politics, even tangentially, seems disingenuous. The San Francisco Bay Area is really friggin’ gay and intersectionality is a thing, you know?
RELATED: Read all Woke recaps here!
Thanks for joining me as I recap Season Two of Woke, here on Geek Girl Authority!
Season Two of Woke is streaming on Hulu now.
https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/27-queer-content-creators-of-color-we-love-and-support/
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