Cottom on The Black Ton: From Bridgerton to Love & Hip-Hop @tressiemcphd @Medium

 Tressie McMillan Cottom has published The Black Ton: From Bridgerton to Love & Hip-Hop at Medium. Here's an excerpt.

The Black ton exists. It is a social world with clearly defined norms and beliefs. Like Regency England, that social world relies almost singularly on heteronormative marriage for identity and gatekeeping. Children are groomed for marriage in ways that are modern but would not feel completely foreign to Bridgerton’s conflicted belle à la ton, Lady Daphne Bridgerton. There are cotillions and informal matchmakers and child-bearing expectations. The Black ton has its social institutions and its organizations: from Jabberwockys to Sigma Pi Phi. There are distinctions between “new money” and inherited status. And, befitting any ton worth its salt, there are parties. And, like any elite status group, the Black ton cultivates loyalties and inspires aspirational fantasies. I would go so far as to say that everything from reality television shows like the “Real Housewives of Atlanta” to hip-hop capitalist fantasies are about latent desires for what the Black ton represents. In fact, television producer Mona Scott-Young may be Shonda’s aspirational Black ton equivalent. Scott-Young produces the wildly successful “Love & Hip Hop” reality series. It is a show that melds the desire of the Black ton with the aesthetics of hip-hop culture. Every sub-culture just uses the tools they have to make their own version of the same fantasy: A girl of good parentage eventually marries a Duke or a platinum rapper because the Ton requires it to reproduce itself.