Great Job, Internet!: Watch this extensively researched history of Black women on reality TV

“Despite reality TV’s highly manipulated scenes, there’s still usually a gimlet eye of revelation about the human condition and social norms among groups. These problems may be exploited by reality TV producers, but they predate the medium,” Jionde says about halfway through her latest video, “A Black Women’s History of Reality TV.” The comment comes amid a discussion of The Real Housewives Of Atlanta and specifically how it depicts men acting violently toward the women on the show. With its 17th season premiering later this week, RHOA has plenty of material to allow Jionde to discuss conspicuous consumption, domestic abuse, American attitudes toward Africa, and much more. 

But it’s not just the Housewives franchise that Jionde tackles. The video, which runs nearly three hours, starts all the way back at Queen For A Day and Candid Camera and highlights Black participants in The Real World, Survivor, and Judge Mablean Ephriam on Divorce Court. Jionde also spends a good amount of time discussing reality TV experiments in the 2000s, like College Hill, a controversial, slice-of-life style show centered on HBCUs that ran on BET from 2004 until 2009. 

As is the case with the rest of Jionde’s work, she foregrounds the experience of Black women in her telling of the history. Jionde launched Intelexual Media in early 2017 and has a robust library of material on both her YouTube channel and her website. Outside of media history, Jionde has created series about the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, as well as histories of food, sex, and true crime, all of which are highly informative and very well researched.