OPINION: Even in a fantasy universe of horrible parents, Raquel and Monet stand out as GOAT-level bad mothers.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more
That’s Mount Rushmore-level sadism. Monet also does it all with the coldest, meanest glare ever. I almost wonder if Monet and Raquel aren’t somehow related. I’m also afraid that Ronnie might be related to Monet as well. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Anywho, so we’ve established that Monet is trash … as a parent, anyway. It’s hard to tell what or who she loves.
Raquel, on the other hand, clearly loves her family, which is what makes this all complicated. So, in the first season of “Raising Kanan,” Raquel puts a gun in her son’s hand and has him try to kill Det. Howard, who as it turns out, IS KANAN’S FATHER. Raquel knows this, by the way. Kanan does not; he, and everybody else (at the time), thinks his father is a dead former street kingpin named Def Con. But Raq … she knows. And she SENDS A SON TO KILL HIS FATHER. As you can imagine, this doesn’t go over well with Kanan once he finds out the truth … nor with Det. Howard, who manages to get the whole thing covered up, but, of course, he must eventually kill his own partner for this. We addressed this in the season 3, episode 1 recap.
If you let Raquel tell it, she’s just doing what needs to be done for the sake of business, but it takes a certain level of cold-hearted malice to actually send a son to kill his father. Whew, chile. By season 3 (which is where we’re at now), Kanan does not mess with his mother. At all. Neither does Lou-Lou, but that’s another talk show. Raquel has made MANY selfish decisions involving people, business and lovers that butt heads with what she claims she’s doing to raise Kanan. Kanan, for his part, can see right through all of this mess and realizes that while his mother loves him, her selfishness, ego and self-righteousness mean she’ll make decisions for everybody else that negatively impact them.
Like this season, when in her attempts to force Kanan back into her life and into her house, SHE PUTS A GUN IN HIS SCHOOL BOOK BAG SO HE’LL GET ARRESTED AND BE FORCED TO COME BACK TO HER HOUSE. I know Raq is smart and always thinking steps ahead of the game, but the fact that she had to hope that Det. Howard would be able to pull some strings to ensure that Kanan didn’t go to jail is bananas to me. She literally set her SON up for a felony because she has no other idea on how to get him to come home. A place, mind you, he absolutely does not want to be.
I’m not getting super into details because if you watch the show you already understand how complicated this is. Raq doesn’t come across like Monet, who seems cold and detached. Raq cooks dinner sometimes and seems to have a heart, but her relentless, cutthroat nature means she’s willing to go to extremes to get her way and that obscures whatever love she has because she will put her son in harm’s way to get what she thinks everybody needs. Again, she marched her son into TWO felonies (murder and possession of a firearm). On purpose. To carry out her agenda.
I just don’t know if having your son kill his father can be topped. At least when Monet had her kids’ father killed, she set it up so somebody ELSE would do it. Same result, of course, but the level of evil is different. That has to put Raq in the running to be the worst, right?
Southside.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest), but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said: “Unknown” (Blackest).
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