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**Mo'Nique's Moment**

**Finally getting Netflix to air her special on her terms, the actress
and comedian has become a beacon for people, like her, who've had to
struggle against social norms.**

Today's Based idea is: Know your worth. Who better to demonstrate that
than Mo'Nique, stand-up comedian and Academy Award-winning actress
whom one might know from classics such as

**Soul Plane**(2004) or

**Precious** (2009) or

**The Parkers**(1999-2004). Her most recent work "My Name Is
Mo'Nique" is a hilarious, moving, well-deserved tribute to her life
story. But what really made the Netflix special was the shining sense of
triumph.

In 2018, Netflix offered Mo'Nique a streaming special for a paltry
payment of half a million dollars. Mo'Nique accurately assessed the
offer as lowball, given her iconic, award-winning career in both comedy
and drama. What's more, Mo'Nique sensed an attempt by a massive
media player with an essentially unlimited budget to devalue her worth.
And what's

**more**, she correctly presumed that the low offer was a reflection of
what the giant thought of not just her career, but of her personhood, as
well.

Mo'Nique called <[link removed]> the offer
"color bias" and "gender bias." She rightly noted that other comedians,
such as Dave Chappelle and Amy Schumer, had received far more in
compensation. Both were paid in the millions for their specials. As
others
<[link removed]>
have noted, this combination of race and gender bias gets slung at Black
women plenty. So much so that a fresh term was coined for it in the
early 2010s
<[link removed]>:
misogynoir.

Mo'Nique knew that accepting the offer would send a message about both
herself and people like her. The message would be one of gratitude for a
pittance. It would be accepting that some people are worth less.

[link removed]

The comedian's call for a Netflix boycott was immediately scoffed at
and jeered. Accusations of arrogance were often paired with outright
verbal abuse against her.

It was clear what many in the public valued more. It was clear the
innumerable cultural contributions that Mo'Nique has made-from memes
to her barrier-breaking performances- meant far less to them than an
entertainment company, even though it has continuously screwed over its
customer base. It was clear that misogyny and racism could be accepted
as long as it wasn't inconveniencing the public.

When Mo'Nique made supporting her inconvenient, and people
disrespected her for daring to ask them for such, she was not deterred.
The actress filed a lawsuit against Netflix in 2019, claiming
discrimination for the company's bad-faith negotiations. Eventually,
Netflix and Mo'Nique settled
<[link removed]>
the dispute through mediation.

And soon after, Mo'Nique accepted an offer from Netflix to produce the
long-awaited special
<[link removed]>.
While it is unclear
<[link removed]>
how much Netflix ended up forking over, the satisfying element of this
story is that we

**do** know she got her money. She made sure of that.

The special, which was released in early April, exuded her sense of
victory: not only in this one instance, but over all that she's had to
overcome. Throughout the special, she comes out in all her glory as
someone who struggled in school, as someone who's known pain and
isolation, and as a woman who likes women. After a long battle,
Mo'Nique is finally able to tell us what she wants to say, about
herself and her career: that she knows struggle and that it will never
break her down. And as she fights for herself, she fights for Black
women, and everyone else like her who has been torn down by society.

As she put it to Refinery29
<[link removed]>:
"The ones who spoke loudly before me gave me the strength to speak this
loudly."

~ RAMENDA CYRUS, JOHN LEWIS WRITING FELLOW

Follow Ramenda Cyrus on Twitter <[link removed]>

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