Permit me to engage in a round of very slow applause for Saturday Night Live, which has just hired Sasheer Zamata into its ranks as a featured player. She will be the show’s first black female cast member since 2007, when Maya Rudolph left the show. That slow clap becomes even more torpid when you realise that Zamata is SNL’s fifth black female cast member of all time, in a programme which has been on the air since 1975 and had more than 130 cast members. I am a huge fan of Zamata’s (she’s one of the women calling for more penises on television in the skit I wrote about last year) and wish her a long, fruitful and incredibly funny time at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
But let’s look at the wider context of her appointment. In the last few years, we have seen the pop scene expand to give us a solo Beyoncé, Rihanna and Azealia Banks (Samantha Cameron is a fan) among others. In 2009, we watched a black man get elected to the highest office in America, and then renew his mandate with a second term, effectively placing a black family at the heart of American culture for four more years. In 2012, we let Scandal’s Olivia Pope into our homes via primetime television.
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