The first time the public ever saw Erica Mena was when she played opposite of Chris Brown in the “Yo! (Excuse Me Miss) video,” the video that essentially launched Chris Brown’s career into the stratosphere. The next time I remember seeing her was her being fired from “Dash,” the retail store owned by a group of sisters who have made collectively, well over a billion dollars from Black appropriation.
While I’m sure there was more in between here, all I can remember after that is her tumultuous relationship with Shad “Bow-Wow” Moss and her illustrious career causing havoc on the Love and Hip-Hop Series, including her volatile and physically emaciating marriage with Safaree Samuels, who is famously Nicki Minaj’s leftovers. I think she even attempted to spark a singing career, but I am very glad, for the safety of my ears, and my ears alone, that someone quickly pissed on that spark. Erica “mean girl, Mena recently found herself in hot water and jobless when she called a fellow castmate, Spice, a Black woman, a (blue) monkey…while on a Black ass show.
Erica’s husband or ex-husband (I do not know what them people be doing) is also a Black Jamaican man. There is a very weird chasm when it comes to interracial dating, and to say that Black women are not negatively affected and feel somewhat negatively about it is intellectually disingenuous. I am personally not against interracial dating, but many times when Black men do it, there is a vocal disdain of Black women as their motivation, even in just a physical sense, more than they are positively descriptive about their preferences (some of those preferences are exactly what they don’t look like either) and many times they end up dating women who are just like Erica—women who enter Black spaces, co-op the glitter of Blackness, the beauty in our speech that hides in plain sight in the American lexicon—and then are quick to separate themselves from the culture that has made them popular, once things don’t go their way.
Women who postulate their superiority over Black women simply because Black men desire them, all the while being a Great Value version of the same Black women they claim they are better than. The Love and Hip-Hop franchise is known for its strife and diet patheticism. Most of the people who star in the show never become more famous than their appearances or are on the way down in their careers. There are clearly some notable exceptions to this rule, but as a general statement, it is a holding cell in the prison that is a stifled career in entertainment.
Erica, however, is not one of those lucky ones with actual talent to pursue. Her quick dismissal of a Black woman’s suffering (while having a half-Black daughter), oh wait, she was fasting, should’ve immediately clued the viewer into what type of person she is. Mona Scott Young has absolutely taken advantage of this situation and she is also to blame for us hearing the slur repeated on national television, but that’s another conversation for another day. But I will say, finally acting and removing her from the show, after intense backlash, was the right thing to do.
Erica has made her debut in Black artist’s videos, her career on a Black show, her kids on a Black d-ck and her brand from Black women, but was quick to remind the world that she was still better than all of that Blackness, which makes me wonder, how the hell does the leech think its better than the blood that nourishes it?
