'Bridgerton' isn’t as progressive on race as it seems, and there's a clear reason why

Netflix’s "Bridgerton" gives viewers a different view of 1800s England – one with Black people in power.

Executive producer Shonda Rhimes’ first series for Netflix quickly resonated with subscribers after premiering on Christmas Day, so much so that it earned a Season 2 renewal on Thursday.

But viewers were also quick to address the issue of colorism – discrimination against people with darker skin tones.

Lighter-skinned Black characters on the show mostly hold positions of nobility and darker-skinned Black characters are relegated to the sidelines and appear villainous or violent.

"I want to watch ("Bridgerton") but the colorism is completely throwing me off," @MyNewEssence96 wrote on Twitter. @CamomilleKing wrote: "I’m enjoying Bridgerton but it really is wild to me how many people are praising it without acknowledging it’s colorism."

Experts say that the show's colorism hinders meaningful inclusion for the Black community.

"It's almost as if the show didn't have enough of a belief in its own originality," Valerie Babb, a professor at Emory University. "Why didn't it take the next step and allow darker characters of color to be more than background scenery, and to be part of the primary actors in the series?"

Lighter-skinned Black characters include regal Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) and Simon, the Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page). Darker-skinned characters are typically minor and include Simon's father, who cruelly banished his son due to his stutter, (Richard Pepple) and boxer friend Will Mondrich (Martins Imhangbe). USA TODAY has reached out to Netflix for comment.

It's a problem that could have been avoided. "If they wanted to have a cast that was more diverse in terms of color hue, they could have," Deborah Whaley, a professor at the University of Iowa, says. She sees the casting decisions as "as a failure and a misstep."

"I don't think that takes away from the quality of the show, but it definitely raises some concerns about the larger cultural impact it could have had if it was more attuned to those differences," she adds.

'We wanted this show to reflect the world': What Netflix's buzzy 'Bridgerton' says about race:

It may seem the show disregards the color of its characters' skin in favor of a "colorblind" approach, but the show addresses race head-on.

"We wanted our approach to race to go beyond mere representation," series creator Chris Van Dusen told USA TODAY in an interview last month. "We wanted race and color to be a part of our text."

In one gripping scene about halfway through the eight-episode season, Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh), who is darker-skinned than other prominent high-society Black characters, meaningfully discusses race in a conversation with Simon.

"We were two separate societies divided by color until a king fell in love with one of us," she says. "Love, your grace, conquers all." She's referring to a white King falling in love with a Black woman (now Queen Charlotte), changing history.

It is ultimately too saccharine, says Adilifu Nama, professor of African American studies at Loyola Marymount University.

"It's a very reductive analysis of race in history and the intertwining of those two. It reduces it down to a personal feeling," Nama explains.

He also notes that the lighter-skinned Black actors and actresses who have meaningful speaking roles – particularly the women – seem to look like they're of mixed ancestry.

"This strikes a chord with Black folk in America, in particular. It strikes a chord with us, given the historical past, coming out of enslavement that there was a mulatto elite that had the benefits of being in an advantageous position to be the leadership class in the Black community coming out of enslavement and during Jim Crow," Nama says.

And even the light-skinned Black cast still suffers from stereotypes. Marina Thompson (Ruby Barker) is an unwed Black mother, something society has perceived as more common for Black women.

Babb hopes the plot isn't as stereotypical moving forward.

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She gives the show credit for reimagining Britain in a way that was more historically accurate , as it did have a strong Black presence, many of whom who were able to experience certain levels of privilege. (It's long been speculated that George III's wife, Queen Charlotte, was mixed-race).

But the show tries to take on too much, Nama says. "At the end of the day, I think the success of the show is more bound to the success of the narrative, and the arc of the characters, rather than any type of racial commentary that it has to make," he says.

He adds: "If you're going to incorporate race into your narrative, into your world-building, then the use of race should be a point of departure, not a point of continued examination." Why couldn't the queen be of a darker complexion, for example?

None of this means that "Bridgerton" should be "canceled," per se. The show is not perfect, Nama says, but it's good and needs to get better.

"I think it is so important to just to really see the dangers in colorism and really see the ways that colorism reinforces the same old notion that says lighter is better," Babb says. "We're just in a world that should be moving beyond that."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Shonda Rhimes' Bridgerton on Netflix has a problem with race, colorism