Issa Rae, the wunderkind web TV producer behind "Awkward Black Girl" and founder of Color Creative, debuted a new web series that plays on the conventional, typically shallow, fears people often have about black men: that they are all savage, rap-loving, violent subhumans. The show, titled "The Legend of Human Black Guy," follows the day-t0-day travails of one very tall, bearded, affable black twenty-something as he goes to work, visits friends, and deals with the burden of his projected outsiderness.

Taken in full view, the show picks at how society has conditioned the understanding of black men in American culture. From the synopsis:

This is the legend of Human Black Guy. Some say he no longer exists. That society has hidden him. That a series of events transformed him. Into what? We'll try to find out.



At a time when the nation finds itself wrestling with the unjust deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, Rae's show arrives as a much-needed counter narrative: Look at us, the show says, black men are not who you imagine them to be; they exist in the plural, not in the singular.

Watch the first episode via YouTube below.

[Image via YouTube]