Had it not been for Jennifer Beals, the character of Bette Porter in the hit Showtime series “The L Word” would not have been biracial. Beals convinced producer Ilene Chaiken to make Bette mixed, “so I could serve all those people who were like me and had never seen themselves represented except for maybe in a Benetton ad,” she told the audience at the POWER UP benefit gala in November 2004.

In a stirring speech, Beals talked about noticing the lack of media representations of mixed race people when she was growing up: “Somehow my story wasn't there. I was too young to start reading Faulkner, I hadn't seen ‘Imitation of Life’ and so I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be the insane, oversexed tragic Mulatto gal. Certainly my otherness sometimes was so palpable it was a wonder that anyone could see me. I was that invisible. And certainly when society fails to write your story there is an unspoken message that the story is not worth telling.”

We applaud Jennifer Beals’ dedication to telling the stories of biracial people. From her portrayal of the mysterious femme fatale Daphne Monet who passes as white in the 1995 film noir “Devil in a Blue Dress,” to her rendering of the Civil War-era biracial plantation heiress Amanda Dickson in the 2000 TV movie “A House Divided,” to her current role as Bette Porter on “The L Word,” she has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to promoting the visibility of mixed race people in a thought-provoking manner.