Girl…where should I begin? If you read the title of the show and were also vaguely confused, let me catch y’all up. Keke Palmer and her digital media company, KeyTV Network, are the latest targets of Black Twitter’s speculative eye after the trailer and concept for her new show, Southern Fried Rice, were announced for streaming on YouTube. And to say reactions were not pretty is an understatement.
Across social media, especially in Black and Asian spaces, a picture is painted of confusion, frustration, and most of all embarrassment. The show follows a Korean girl who is navigating life at an HBCU and explores cultural overlaps and racial dynamics. But instead, it’s being called “tone-deaf”, “misguided,” and being dubbed as “the wrong project at the wrong time.” But why?
THE PREMISE ( AND THE PROBLEM )
The show opens with KoKo Jackson, a Korean girl adopted by Black parents, narrating her life in Oatsville, Georgia. It’s a tiny town of 800 where she was “raised on catfish and cornbread.” She explains that Black culture is the only culture she knows before heading off to attend her father’s alma mater, a fictional historically Black college called Wright University.
From the jump, the writing feels like a crash course in Black Southern aesthetics for outsiders — throwing in phrases like “tater salad,” and “put my foot in them” to almost prove its Blackness before introducing KoKo’s difference. The series sets out to explore identity and belonging, but by the series’s end, it feels more like a sociology lecture than a story.
The first episode’s title, Elephant in the Room, was truly an understatement. This is also a good time to note that most of the episodes aren’t very long — feeling more like shorts than full episodes — and there is so much to unpack. Like, here’s a fact: KoKo’s Black cousin, Tami, is revealed to be pregnant at 17 years old. Unlike KoKo, she will not be attending college as the family pressures her to keep the baby.
So you mean to tell me that the show… based on Black culture… made by Black people… is going to have the Black girl go through a teen pregnancy, not be able to go to college, and stay stuck in her hometown — while her non-Black cousin gets to experience HBCU culture? I’m irked just writing that statement out. That choice and direction the show decided to go in, especially in this current climate of lack of control over women’s bodies, is wild to a lot of those who have seen promos for the show.
TikTok creator Claire couldn’t even get past the title of the series.
And what’s worse is that Tami isn’t even treated like a full character — she’s treated like a lesson. She’s the ‘Disposable Black Best Friend’, and is written more as a stereotype than a person. Her storyline begins with deep frustration, shame, and a glimpse into the systemic trap of being pushed by family to carry a child without support. However, the moment KoKo’s college story starts, Tami’s entire existence fades to the background.
That’s the problem: her complexity is cut off so the show can focus on its non-Black protagonist’s ‘journey’, which is something this show frequently does with its Black cast.
For example, in the second episode, we’re introduced to KoKo’s roommate, Joy, who is clearly not messing with Koko because of her race and the fact that she is attending Wright, which also raised many eyebrows in the fictional world. My friend Lorelee Patterson, who’s Blasian and grew up in the South (and watched the show with me), said it best as we met Joy and about the show as a whole.
“Making the more overtly pro-Black character the antagonist is nasty work,” Lorelee Patterson said.“It turns valid frustration into some ‘angry woke girl’ trope. And for what? If this was supposed to be a story about bridging cultures, it didn’t bridge anything — it just built a wall of bad writing.”
The character who the audience sees as the voice of many Black people came across as racist, angry, and just overall mean. It can make one question what purpose it serves and what audience the writers hope to garner.
The show glosses over so many important topics within the Black community in favor of following KoKo. They skip right past her privilege as an Korean woman in contrast to her darker-skinned peers. They ignore real issues — the rampant problem of STDs in the Black community, infertility, hypersexuality, police stoppings, Black masculinity, gender, and sexuality — all of it pushed aside for aesthetics. But sure, let’s watch KoKo dress up as a ninja for Halloween (which, by the way, has its own set of problems because she’s Korean, not Japanese). But that’s beside the point.
At its core, Southern Fried Rice had potential— a story about a Korean adoptee raised in a Black family and trying to find herself at an HBCU. But somewhere between the writer’s room and the edit bay, that concept turned into something hollow. The show centers non-Black women in a space built by and for Black people, while dressing her in the very aesthetics Black women have historically been shamed for, from gold chains, baby hairs, satin bonnets, to door-knocker earrings. Instead of interrogating that dynamic, the show seems to treat it like a costume party.
TikTok user @arriakida criticized the script and the obvious blaccent employed, poking fun at the accent and the phrases used in the show.
“WU… YOU KNOW!”
As a Howard student, that “WU… YOU KNOW!” line flung out as a punch-drunk nod to HBCU culture and felt equal parts performative and reductionist. It wasn’t earned; it was thrown in to display rather than appreciate.
The show’s portrayal of the things that make HBCUs sacred — the Divine Nine, yard culture, the community — came off tone-deaf at best, and misinformed at worst. Instead of honoring the unique nuances of these institutions, Southern Fried Rice uses them as props —symbols of ‘Blackness’ for background texture, rather than lived experience.
It’s about intention. If the purpose of the show was to highlight cultural overlap, then why start with a story that alienates both audiences it’s trying to represent?
WHO WAS THIS FOR?
If anyone can figure it out, please let me know! Across social media, confusion and frustration reigned. On Reddit Subgroup r/blackladies, one commenter wrote,
“It is so damn disrespectful to make a show about an HBCU centering non-Black people…especially in the face of the mission of the schools.”
Another reviewer wrote:
“I came into the series hating it and walked out hating it even more… this series is the perfect example of Black stereotypes and Black caricature.”
Over on the r/asianamerican thread, people echoed the same confusion.
“The tone of the show seems like they’re surprised about an Asian person being anywhere near Black people,” one commenter said. Another pointed out that the actress playing KoKo is not Korean, but Hmong — sparking criticism about the production’s lack of cultural care.
As one Redditor summed up:
“Both Asians and Black people are confused. They tried to appeal to both and ended up just making everyone scratch their heads.”
Lorelee let out an audible sigh during one of our many pauses while watching and said, “This is the only mainstream HBCU-centered story backed by a major Black star, and it stars a non-Black person. We haven’t even built the foundation for this genre yet.” The show was off to a bad start, and the response by the showrunners definitely didn’t help.
BATS EYELASHES, BLANK STARE
Following the significant backlash, Southern Fried Rice creator Nakia Stephens took to interviews to clarify her intentions. A Savannah State alumna, Stephens said the show was ten years in the making, inspired by her own HBCU experience and her observations of non-Black students navigating historically Black spaces.
“I welcome the conversation. I welcome curiosity,” she told TheGrio, explaining that the project was never meant to mock HBCUs, but to reflect the complicated layers of identity and belonging. Behind the scenes, she noted, the production was led by a team deeply connected to Black culture — a Black woman director, HBCU-educated producers, and KeyTV’s majority-Black staff.
Keke Palmer also defended the work, emphasizing that KeyTV’s mission is to “give creators of color space to grow.” She reminded the audience that the network has invested heavily — over half a million dollars by her count — in Stephens’ creative vision. Palmer framed the controversy as part of a broader tension in Black media: the fine line between representation and responsibility.
But even with that context, the disconnect remains. The issue was never about who was behind the camera — it was about how what made it to the camera felt out of step with the communities it claimed to represent.
When the showrunners say they wanted to “spark dialogue”, they succeeded — but maybe not in the way they hoped, as even the response to the backlash drew more backlash with people simply not caring as the harm was already done.
GRANDMA NOT MAD, JUST HURT
The last HBCU show that truly left a cultural mark on most Black viewers was A Different World — a series that depicted spaces that the writers had lived in. Southern Fried Rice could’ve been that next moment, but instead it feels like a cautionary tale about what happens when representation becomes aesthetic rather than authentic.
When you really zoom out, the problems with Southern Fried Rice aren’t just about bad writing or awkward pacing — they speak to something much deeper. There’s already a long, unspoken tension that exists between communities of color. From the workplace to college admissions to pop culture, there’s always been that invisible wall: the one that whispers that we’re supposed to be on opposing sides instead of standing shoulder to shoulder.
And that’s what makes this show so frustrating. At a time when Black people are already fighting to preserve the few spaces made for us — HBCUs, DEI programs, media representation — we get a show where the one space built to affirm Black identity becomes the backdrop for a non-Black woman’s coming-of-age story. That’s not inclusion.
The irony is that this show dropped during a period when affirmative action has been gutted, when conversations around race in education are more polarized than ever, and when Black voices in creative spaces are being silenced under the guise of ‘diversity fatigue’. The optics of centering an outsider’s story in an HBCU setting while the Black characters are either antagonized, tokenized, or quietly pushed aside aren’t just tone-deaf, they’re almost symbolic of what’s happening in real time.
It’s as if Southern Fried Rice took every real-world anxiety about representation, access, and cultural ownership, and accidentally acted it out on screen and not in a conscious way. It’s not just that KoKo is the lead, it’s that the Black characters around her are reduced to lessons instead of people. They’re not given the freedom to be complex, flawed, or even joyful. They’re either angry, struggling, or forgotten.
And yet — if I’m being honest — maybe, in some twisted, backhanded way, they did succeed.
The majority of Black and Asian audiences are actually in agreement: this show is confusing as hell.
It has managed to unite two historically disconnected communities in collective disbelief. Cultural confusion might not have been the goal, but Southern Fried Rice achieved it spectacularly.
Still, it hurts that a show that could’ve bridged those very real cultural divides instead became an example of how not to do it. Representation without understanding isn’t progress, it’s parody. And when the loudest ‘Black voices’ on screen are the ones written to be unlikable, angry, or disposable, it becomes clear that some people still don’t know the difference between diversity and depth.
The truth is, this does matter. How Black people are portrayed matters. How Black people tell their stories matters. How Black people connect to other cultures matter.
When people outside of Blackness are given the mic to narrate Black spaces, we risk erasing the very authenticity we’re trying to protect. Southern Fried Rice could’ve been the story that showed what cross-cultural love and learning looks like. Instead, it became a case study in what happens when representation forgets to listen first.
At least, in a weird, unintended way, it brought Black and Asian viewers together — not through solidarity in the story, but through shared cultural confusion. Maybe that’s the one thing it got right. So, in true southern fashion, all I can say is bless their hearts because they really served us Southern Fried Rice when all we asked for was soul food.