The legacy of ABC's 'Black-ish': Presenting a Black TV family that isn't a monolith - Boise State Public Radio
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As ABC's groundbreaking sitcom Black-ish leaves the air tonight — after eight seasons, 174 episodes, two spin offs and a raft of Emmy and Golden Globe nominations – it's easy to bask in the glow of a venerated series taking one last victory lap.
But this milestone also brings to mind an incident I witnessed during the show's early days, when people who might normally champion the series still weren't quite sure what to make of its bold, irreverent examinations of culture and race.
Back in early 2015, I was seated at a charity event next to venerated White House reporter April D. Ryan, when Black-ish creator Kenya Barris and star Anthony Anderson stopped by her table, asking playfully if she had seen the series yet. She admitted she hadn't – in part — because she wasn't sure what to make of the show's name.
This was something I had heard before from other people of color. They were afraid, without having actually seen the show, that the name Black-ish was some white TV producer's awkward joke – a fumbling attempt to look hip by someone who didn't understand Black culture or Black people. ("What kind of ish is this?" more than a few people asked me, back then.)
Barris and Anderson handled the situation well, joking with Ryan while assuring her that the name came from talented Black folks who had created a new kind of TV family. But I could also tell they had heard such trepidation before – not a great sign for a new series struggling to prove it could be a great companion to ABC's hit sitcom Modern Family.
Black-ish helped rewrite the rules for how TV comedies talked about race, culture and families of color, daring to walk that tightrope just as some television networks were trying to get serious about showing diversity onscreen.
Black-ish helped rewrite the rules for how TV comedies talked about race, culture and families of color; daring to walk that tightrope just as some television networks were trying to get serious about showing diversity onscreen. And it wasn't always an easy path, especially when Black audiences weren't quite sure if they were ready to trust TV producers to get their culture right.
The difference between Black and Black-ish
Anderson's character — put-upon, upper middle class dad Andre "Dre" Johnson – delivered the show's mission statement in 2014, during the very first episode. "Sometimes I worry that in an effort to make it, Black folks have dropped a little bit of their culture and the rest of the world has picked it up," he fretted.
"Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke are R&B gods. Kim Kardashian is the symbol for big butts. And Asian guys are just unholdable on the dance floor. Come on!"
What Dre was really describing, of course, was a collision of culture that marked the modern moment – a social landscape way different than the terrain navigated by, say, the Huxtables — the popular, upper middle class Black family who deftly reflected respectability politics and avoided such issues on The Cosby Show.
This was a world where Dre's oldest son played field hockey and his oldest daughter thought nothing of her white friends using the n-word. It's also a world where Dre's sneaker collection was better than his sons' and he was constantly worried that his streetwise, too-cool-for-school father would see him as a wealthy sellout.
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