It looks like All My Babies' Mamas isn't going to happen.
The Oxygen reality special was supposed to follow Shawty Lo, a rapper from Atlanta, and the complications that attend his relationships with the mothers (10) of his children (11). It was scheduled to premiere this spring, but almost as soon as it was announced in December, there was outcry from people who felt that the show propped up demeaning stereotypes about black people. Oxygen announced Tuesday that the show will be scuttled before it even airs. (Shawty Lo is reportedly fighting back with a petition of his own urging the network to reverse course again and let Babies' Mamas see the light of day.)
Babies' Mamas exists — or would have existed — in a television landscape that is increasingly devoid of shows with black casts, and the term "baby mama" itself makes a lot of people concerned about the number of black children are born to unmarried parents see red. It's a perfect storm of anxieties about cultural representation and pathologies. There aren't a lot of images of black people on TV, the argument goes. The ones that appear could at least be affirming, or barring that, not stereotypical.
A petition by Color of Change, an influential advocacy organization, accused Oxygen of trying to profit from "inaccurate, dehumanizing, and harmful perceptions of Black families."
The form-letter petition goes on:
Research shows that inflammatory images like these can result in real world consequences for our families, including less attention from doctors, harsher sentencing by judges, lower likelihood of being hired or admitted to school, lower odds of getting loans, and a higher likelihood of getting shot by police.