FOX

Last Wednesday marked the season finale of 2015’s biggest smash hit “Empire,” drawing in 17 million viewers to ever growing fanbase. “Empire” is probably my favorite show of 2015 so far, beating out “Archer” and “How to Get Away with Murder.” The show has everything a good drama should and every week its packs a wallop to the face.

It hinges on the performances of Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard’s one–two combo as Cookie and Lucious Lyon respectively. The only problem is that it is on my least favorite network: Fox. A show that is the perfect fusion of the UPN shows of my youth with the quality of a Shonda Rimes joint is on a network that has deemed themselves the savior of the black community.

It can’t be. I am a good liberal and a tolerant person. I am experiencing a level of cognitive dissonance no other person has felt because I support a show created by a network that does not particularly hold black people in a good light.

The fatal shooting of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammed, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha, 19 in a Suburban neighborhood in North Carolina was reported more than 12 hours after the fact on national television. Chapel Hill Police released the identity of the self-confessed killer, Craig Hicks, 46, approximately seven hours after a 911 call by a distressed neighbor. He reportedly shot all three of them, point blank, in the head.

Why did it take so long for national media to pick the story up? Their silence stood in stark contrast to prompt coverage of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris last month. Only after a social media outburst protesting their lack of coverage did we see CNN, FOX and MSNBC headline the shooting of 3 Muslims in Chapel Hill.

This initial radio-silence reinforced the other-ness of Muslim Americans as well as other minorities in the US. It spoke louder than any anti-Muslim messages online could have.