The Devolution Will Be Televised.

Black American entertainment has been an influence on world culture since its creation. But when it comes to recent television, a lot of connections seem to have timed out.

By Torraine Walker

Once upon a time in Black America, you could turn on your television, channel surf across multiple networks, and find something to relate to. Most of us had disciplinarian fathers like James Evans from Good Times, or brothers and cousins like Rog and Dwayne from What’s Happening. We laughed at Sanford & Son, and saw our aspirations move on up with The Jeffersons and The Cosby Show while preparing for HBCU life with A Different World.

At the risk of sounding like the unk on the couch yelling at the screen, most of what we watch now looks like it comes from showrunners that graduated from East Highland High School.

The history of Black people on television has always been complicated. At first the roles offered were little better than the buffoons and mammys that were ported over from radio but even so, Black families would crowd around their TV sets to catch a glimpse of actors that looked like them. By the 60s demands for civil rights in the streets began to echo through entertainment. Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge were changing the images of Black people on Broadway and Hollywood and the images of Black people on TV began to be seen as intelligent, or at least as more than caricatures.

The 80’s and 90’s were the golden age of Black TV: Roc, In Living Color, Martin, Living Single, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Girlfriends, and Family Matters dominated the airwaves. What made these programs resonate was their connection to the culture, created by Black people who grew up around other Black people. Even more incredibly, these shows found audiences outside of their expected demographics and became can’t miss TV events for all Americans because they were entertaining and well done.

I can’t feel a lot of this new stuff.

I can tell it’s being made by people who discovered their Blackness in college and are either overcompensating by being super militant or writing characters who are melanated versions of valley girls and Ross Geller. Combined with subject matter based in psychological issues, triggers, buzzwords and sexual and racial identity angst, what you get is a sort of “representation matters at all costs” mashup ironically reminiscent of what our ancestors were forced to accept, and it entertains nobody.

Having said that, some great new shows are still being made. Series like Johnson, Cross and Forever continue the legacy of quality television being culturally connected. There’s a rich history for Black creatives to pull from if they lean into their experiences and don’t see them as limitations, but as a baseline and grounding to tell universal stories.

Maybe this is progress. Demographics and cultural tastes are always evolving and we live in a culturally interconnected world. Social media has shortened the speed by which trends move from one culture to another and if one of the goals of Black entertainment is to show multifaceted Black life, we have to accept that diversity is a part of life. We need hood stories and suburban stories, talented tenth stories and working class stories. There’s room for all of it. Variety is the key.

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