On Sunday evening, Tracee Ellis Ross won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy for her scene-stealing performance on ABC’s Black-ish as efficient goofball Rainbow Johnson.
Golden Globes 2017: Watch Tracee Ellis Ross’s gorgeous speech for all the “women of color and colorful people”
The Black-ish star is the first black woman to win Best Actress in a Comedy since 1983.
Caroline Framke wrote about culture, which usually means television. Also seen @ The A.V. Club, The Atlantic, Complex, Flavorwire, NPR, the fridge to get more seltzer.
The category was stacked, and in winning it, Ross bested fellow nominees that included Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Rachel Bloom. She also became the first black woman to win Best Actress in a Comedy since Debbie Allen won for Fame in 1983.
So it’s fitting that Ellis Ross gave a beautiful acceptance speech that explicitly recognized women of color:
This is for all the women, women of color, and colorful people whose stories, ideas, thoughts are not always considered worthy and valid and important. But I want you to know that I see you. We see you.
It’s even more fitting that Ellis Ross gave this beautiful speech while being honored for her performance on Black-ish. The sitcom regularly addresses topics that other sitcoms don’t (or won’t, or can’t), as beautifully demonstrated with its season two episode “Hope.” The series’ standout installment to date — and Vox’s favorite television episode of 2016, period — centered on some of the most frank discussions about police brutality against unarmed black people to appear on scripted television, let alone on a family sitcom.
Naturally, Ellis Ross jumped at the chance to shout out her show:
It is an honor to be on this show ... to continue expanding the way we are seen and known, and to show the magic and the beauty and the sameness of a story and stories that are outside where the industry usually looks.
It was a gorgeous moment starring the first black woman to win this award in 33 years — and hopefully the Globes won’t wait another 33 years to honor another.
