African-Americans in Television

http://hist380.ferrellhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/HIST-380-Project-4-2.pdf

3 thoughts on “African-Americans in Television”

  1. conger87 says:

    These shows all ran before my time, but I did occasionally watch The Jeffersons while growing up. Unfortunately I cannot really remember much of it, outside of the catchy theme song. Watching Amos ‘N’ Andy, did you get the same feeling that the NAACP did about the show? I can understand where they are coming from on this issue, the first show about African Americans not showing African Americans in a good light. Yet I feel like that is what all sitcoms do, poke fun at the people they portray. To be fair, my opinions are shaped on my experiences decades later so maybe they do not apply here. How would you say the shows listed here compare to other well known African American shows, like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or In Living Color? I am not a big television watcher, so perhaps somebody with more knowledge could chime in here.
    (I pledge 151)

    • admin says:

      A large part of the problem for blacks in entertainment was their lack of diversity in roles. They were actors, not directors or writers or producers. As actors, they played butlers and maids, not judges and bankers. So, how the ONLY show with a black cast presented African Americans was critical. “Fools” and “crooks” and “hen-pecked husbands” had no counter; there was not another show with educated, thoughtful, and professional characters. Today, we have it all: thugs and CEOs. (The Fresh Prince’s uncle is an attorney/judge; his aunt is a teacher.) African Americans play all types of characters, just as whites do. But imagine the day when whites had little, if any, contact with people of other races; they did not live in the same area, they did not go to the same schools, they did not work with them. Their only familiarity with blacks was what they read about or heard on the radio or saw in movies and television. And what they heard and saw on radio and television was created by whites and limited: comedy/farce. (What if the only presentation of college students had one type of character: undisciplined, lazy, disrespectful, etc. What do you think people who watched that show and did not know anything about actual college students would believe about you? Another example: as a result of post-Vietnam War films, the standard image of a man who served in Vietnam was suicidal, if not homicidal, someone who could not function in society, someone who drank or did drugs, someone who could not hold a job, someone who could not relate to his wife or children. I know Vietnam vets who fit each of those labels, but most Vietnam vets did NOT fit any of them and very much resented depictions that distorted what they did in the war and how they were living their lives after it.)

    • rhasting says:

      Hey Jeff. Yes, I absolutely understand the NAACP’s viewpoint. The episode embedded with the television special “Anatomy of a Controversy” was really hard to watch. I actually remember watch all those shows when I was growing up in the 1970s, and I can honestly say, that television programming itself has changed. The roles that African -Americans has changed as well, in that they are not so much relegated to servants, but evidenced from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences only acknowledging and awarding all white actors two years in a row, the “walls of racial prejudice,” are not as eroded as we might think? If you would like to know more about those television shows from the 70s, check out “The Seventies” on netflix, its really educational and enlightening.

Leave a Reply