For years TV tried to pretend that race didn’t exist or, at least, didn’t matter. That was a mostly successful strategy, one the country embraced. Not for nothing was “The Cosby Show” dominant in the ratings for a decade.
Long before the dawn of “post-racial America” — a mythical invention of the media supposedly coincidental with the election of the first black president — television strove to ignore matters of race and racism. Network executives endorsed a noncommittal “diversity”; showrunners aimed for “color-blind casting” and writers crafted bland types rather than actual people in the process of presenting a rainbow coalition in prime time.
This year, the generalities got specific.
Like academics and lawyers who speak in terms of “color-blind” versus “color-conscious,” TV has moved from the former to the latter. Pretending not to see race has been revealed to be as discriminatory as any bias on the basis of race.
In 2014, we’re seeing fewer TV types who “just happen to be black” or “just happen to be Hispanic,” and more specifically black, Hispanic, Asian and biracial characters.
The sitcom “Black-ish” on ABC and the hour-long dramedy “Jane the Virgin” on CW are prime examples of TV now seeing race more clearly, and encouraging viewers to, as well. about a Hispanic striver, is another push toward specificity by ABC Entertainment president Paul Lee, who launched the series saying, “People want to see what they live, voices that reflect the America they know.” Coming at midseason, ABC’s a culture-class comedy about an Asian family running a Western-style steakhouse, will do the same.
The goal is no longer a happy indistinct melting pot, but a new awareness of the elements in our all-American tossed salad.
There have been bumps along the way — some find “Black-ish” offensive in its depiction of “bro” culture and reliance on jokes about physical attributes. The male Mexican-Americans on “Cristela” can be seen as dim-witted sex machines. The upcoming Asian-American comedy will present an unflattering portrait of a shrill, unhappy Chinese mother. Part Tiger Mom, part kvetch.
At times it feels as if stereotyping is welcome, as long as it’s done by the group talking about itself (hello, Adam Goldberg’s parade of Jewish stereotypes, .
When Anthony Anderson’s character worries that his kids aren’t “black enough,” because they’ve not endured the struggles he and his father did and are happily assimilated members of an affluent African-American family, it’s apparently OK for him to invoke stereotypes (cue the can of grape soda in the fridge). In some ways, this show is more about class than race. Yet the underlying message is that, even for the wealthy, being black in America means you never stop thinking about being black in America.
That may be a sad commentary on the country. And let’s not forget the series debuted in the midst of protests over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. But television has made progress in at least addressing the subject.
Changing demographics
If you watched the recent PBS documentary, you know that more than half of U.S. cities have majority non-white populations; 50 percent of births in the U.S. have been to people of color since 2011; today’s target demo for advertisers is increasingly multicultural, and in 2043 ethnic minorities will become the majority, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Yet, in prime-time television, most families are white. They’re also mostly middle- to upper-middle-class conspicuous consumers, the better to make advertisers fit comfortably in context.
These new shows challenge perceptions as groups make fun of their own. Dre (Anderson), the father worried that his kids have lost their cultural identity on “Black-ish,” claims basketball as the only appropriate black male sport, not his son’s field hockey. He practices “the nod,” acknowledging fellow black men wherever he goes and dresses his family as the Jackson Five for Halloween. A step forward or backward? Hard to tell.
The family on the sweetest new series of the year, knocks the telenovela form while paying tribute. Both the grandmother, who is devout to the point of superstitiousness, and the Latin Lover Narrator are winks at common stereotypes. In the Nov. 17 episode, embedded advertising for Target acknowledges the demographic shift that makes the show possible as Jane ( ), shops for tortillas and beer.
In each case, there’s a thin line between making fun of racist attitudes and pulling off a racist joke.
“Black-ish” pays attention to America’s biracial population in a refreshing way. The mixed-race mom Rainbow (really), played by the charming Tracee Ellis Ross, embodies the show’s viewpoint. The question is always, how black is black enough? How black is merely black-ish? When Rainbow is accused by Dre of not really being black, she shoots back, “Tell that to my hair and my ass.”
About that provocative, even pejorative title: “While that stings for anyone who has ever been called an ‘Oreo,’ it’s oddly funny to think that in 2014 people could believe that there is only one way to be black. See, black people can laugh at themselves, too,” wrote black TV critic Mekeisha Madden Toby in The Wrap, an entertainment news website.
On “Black-ish,” old-school Pops (Laurence Fishburne) makes fun of his son’s political correctness, his aversion to spanking, his loose grip on his family’s cultural heritage, demonstrated by his grandson’s assimilation into majority culture. On “Jane,” grandmother Alba Villanueva (Ivonne Coll) speaks Spanish, the kids answer in English, reflecting a current reality. When Jane’s abuela is dogmatic about religion, when her father the telenovela star is vain about his looks, it’s an acknowledgment of stereotypes without much effort to push through them.
Is TV trying to have it both ways? Of course. Some academic observers see no sign of progress in the TV networks’ latest tactic.
“The U.S. media either dumbs down race for those progressives in denial, or it presents uninformed reactionary views as valid opinions,” according to Naomi Zack, a professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon who specializes in matters of race. “I don’t think any of this is progress,” she wrote in an e-mail, ” just a great treading of water, with some drowning.”
Asked about the new batch of network shows that engage with race, Janice Peck, a (white) professor in the department of media studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, observed that they’re all comedies. By definition, she suggested, they can’t launch extended serious discussions like “The Wire” did on cable.
Stereotype or fact?
I disagree. Some of the toughest topics are tackled best via comedy.
In “Black-ish,” Peck said, “that show is interesting because it seems to fall pretty reliably into safe stereotypical areas. Hair! Does honest talk about race involve hair?”
That’s a white academic’s view. Conversely, the black critic Toby says yes: She wrote in The Wrap, “they could do a whole season on black hair alone.” (“Black hair is different. Not just the texture but how it shapes our identities,” she elaborated last week.)
Peck knows that the industry bottom line is key, so she’s reluctant to call it progress.
“I wouldn’t say that these are bad developments. Nothing appears on television that isn’t there because they imagine they can be profitable.” The proliferation of shows touching on race represents a calculated gamble based on demographic research. Ultimately, she said, “the changing nature of the population has made it possible.”
The assimilation dream that drove so many 1950s comedies continues to motivate the current shows about race. Cristela is an upwardly striving daughter of immigrants while the rich white girl, the boss’ daughter, is painted as unmotivated. The clueless white girl will inevitably learn Important Life Lessons from Cristela, who will humanize her as she joins her in the middle class.
“It’s the same story this many decades later,” Peck said. She regularly assigns her undergrads to pick and analyze shows from the ’50s. “They always notice how much things stay the same even when they appear different.”
Television is always behind where the culture is, Peck said, “because it is so conservative as a medium.”
Part of the reason we’re seeing this profusion of shows involving race now, she ventured, is that the audience has seen enough of the sort of jokes in “Black-ish” by “watching Chris Rock specials.” By comparison, it’s not threatening.
While “Cosby” prided itself on having universal appeal, the new shows about race know they are seen differently by different groups. They carefully provide entry points for all, but lace the comedy with specifics that insiders can embrace, from grape soda on “Black-ish” to Catholic premarital counseling on “Jane the Virgin” to unfamiliar Chinese food on “Fresh Off the Boat.”
Ajume Wingo, director of the Center for Values and Social Policy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has long addressed the “color-conscious/color-blind” debate. He defines the concept of color-blindness as “the idea of an official policy of indifference in regard to race in the formulation of racial politics. That seemed to me like a goal. Then the idea of color-consciousness was used as a kind of corrective.”
Wingo sees what he calls “a race industry” in the U.S., in media, academia, everywhere. “But if you look at the new generation, young people aren’t thinking in terms of this racial line: It’s a kind of aesthetics. Color-consciousness is fading away with the new generation.”
It may become outmoded, but for now TV will stick with color- consciousness. Ultimately that’s better than avoiding the subject, pretending to be “post-racial” or color-blind. There are differences, there are cultural distinctions, and noting those differences, even in hair or a punchline, honors them.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp
