"A deeper view of "House of Cards" reveals how racism has worked and continues to work for the preservation of power in America that people of color can't seem to penetrate. If you want to know why our real-life African-American POTUS appears too often constrained by forces beyond his control, this show and this season in particular provides glimpses into the mechanics that make those constraints possible.
The Confederates failed; white supremacy still won.
This is what resonates most deeply during the second season of this Netflix drama based on a British show about corruption in Parliament. The American version is also about corruption, but not neatly as a critique of it. Instead, in the American card house, we find that corruption is an exclusive province in the federal government that no non-white person can access, even with wealth and Cabinet-level security clearances.
Almost every person of color in the show thinks they have some measure of power, until white power wielders -- namely Underwood and his nemesis, the Koch Brother-ish Raymond Tusk -- show them what power really is...
Political and social issues including feminism, rape culture and energy policy are all entertained by Underwood, and his equally cold-blooded wife Claire, but only in their quest to attain more power. They make no serious attempts to resolve any of those problems, instead using them to leverage more political capital. It's a tangled web indeed, but it's only a web of intrigue for viewers of color if you care about how white supremacy and privilege is maintained in America. Since we all live mostly as the victims of that maintenance, there is very little illumination here."
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