It's in the midst of their final argument that Hannah and Sandy find themselves yelling at each other about race. "I also would love to know how you feel about the fact that two out of three people on death row are black men," she says. "Wow, Hannah. I didn't know that. Thank you for enlightening me that things are tougher for minorities," he shoots back. Soon, he's mocking her for exoticizing him—"'Oh, I'm a white girl and I moved to New York and I'm having a great time and I got a fixed gear bike and I'm gonna date a black guy and we're gonna go to a dangerous part of town,'" he scoffs. "And then they can't deal with who I am"—and she's feebly turning around the accusation on him. "The joke's on you, because you know what? I never thought about the fact that you were black once," Hannah says when it's clear the breakup is really happening, despite the fact that she's the one who introduced race into the conversation. "That's insane." Sandy tells her. "You should, because that's what I am." By the time he asks Hannah to leave, both have admitted they don't feel good about what they've said to each other. The viewer at home, witnessing such shrewdly observed yet ultimately unresolved racial and political tension, is bound to feel just as rattled.

It's a credit to Dunham and the episode's writer, Jenni Konner, that the scene is so unsettling. If they had responded to the controversy over Girls and race by quietly casting a famous black actor and pretending nothing more needed to be said, they might have looked just as naïve as Hannah, who claims not to see race because she's in denial about her own prejudices. Instead, they accompanied their tacit apology with a moment that challenged not only their own and their characters' privilege, but, in its deconstruction of what has come to be known as "hipster racism," that of the show's core audience. Although self-awareness pervades Dunham's work, it was surprising to see such insight from Girls on this particular topic.

Unfortunately, one great exchange does not a truly diverse TV show (or authentic portrait of New York City) make. And while there do seem to be more non-white faces in Girls' party scenes this year, Sandy is still the only character of color who plays a substantial part in any of the season's first four episodes. As she did with the controversial nannies Jessa attempts to liberate in Season 1, and despite the fact that Sandy at least occupies a similar social milieu to the characters, Dunham continues to cast non-white actors only when race defines their character—which is to say, she still doesn't get it.

But let's stop considering Dunham's case in isolation. She's hardly the only white writer or director who has recently been called out for not getting it. Last year, such venerated cultural figures as Quentin Tarantino and Michael Chabon both sparked debate -- not because they excluded characters of color, but because they placed them at the center of their works and represented their experience in ways some found problematic. In a piece defending Chabon's right to write from the perspective of an African-American man, as he does in his 2012 novel, Telegraph Avenue, Tanner Colby noted how many of the book's reviewers expressed discomfort with aspects of his portrayal. The controversy surrounding Tarantino's Django Unchained, meanwhile, has rivaled the Girls debate in intensity. The story of a serendipitously liberated slave's spectacularly violent quest to find and free his wife, its high-profile detractors include Spike Lee, who called it "disrespectful to my ancestors."