In the 1970s, studios exploited two major trends to appeal to different racial demographics, or white viewers who were curious about them. First, a fascination with Far Eastern cultures created a deluge of domestic and imported martial arts movies. Audiences saw the white David Carradine wandering the Old West as a half-Chinese Shaolin monk in Kung Fu.
Second, studios attempted to attract black audiences with blaxploitation films that put Black Power and black identity issues at the forefront. Small Southern towns like Mayberry had lost much of their charm after years of news reports depicting feral white Southern mobs opposing civil rights. Instead of Barney Fife, Richard Roundtree stomped out urban organized crime as the smoldering, streetwise, hard-boiled private eye John Shaft.
Although Shaft was not the first blaxploitation film, it was certainly one of the most iconic. Fun fact: Shaft’s main theme won Best Original Song at the 44th Oscars. Isaac Hayes became the first black songwriter to receive such an award. Many imitators would follow John Shaft’s example throughout the ‘70s, but they were not too different from the vengeful, white Harry Callahans and Paul Kerseys who annihilated petty thugs, biker gangs, and serial killers from San Francisco to New York City. Amidst the grim and gritty crime thrillers on film, however, an interconnected web of TV sitcoms altered the media landscape starting in 1971 with Norman Lear’s All in the Family.
Instead of a wealthy suburban family like the Bradys, the Bunkers were a white working-class family in Queens that often struggled to stay afloat. Carroll O’Connor’s Archie, the family patriarch, served as a talisman for many of the anxieties and prejudices that propelled his demographic into supporting Richard Nixon and his “law and order” message. Lear used his shows as means to highlight serious contemporary social issues with humor. He did not create all of his shows, but he certainly adapted them.
All in the Family featured several recurring characters who would butt heads with Archie, and some would eventually enjoy their own spinoffs. The first was Archie’s vocally liberal cousin Maude, immortalized by Bea Arthur’s deadpan delivery. The second was the Jefferson family. The Jeffersons entered the series as the Bunkerses’ black friends and, in the first season, moved in next door. Archie was deeply uncomfortable with this development but gradually accepted it as the series progressed. Black viewers could see some of their own experiences reflected in the Jeffersons, while white audiences were exposed to issues they had never been aware of.
The spinoffs would beget spinoffs of their own, including Good Times, which focused on a black family living in an impoverished Chicago public housing project, heavily implied to be Cabrini-Green. As public housing projects became cesspools of despair in the public imagination, the Evanses regularly showed their resilience and perseverance by finding joy in despair.
Another Lear sitcom, Sanford and Son, showed the delightfully cantankerous Fred Sanford (played by Redd Foxx) and his son Lamont trying to make ends meet as a pair of Los Angeles junk dealers. The father and son duo contended with many of the squalid conditions in the Watts neighborhood and put up with casual prejudice from the police and shopkeepers, while Fred routinely disparaged his Puerto Rican and Asian neighbors. Lear’s characters, however, tended to be on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Lear wrote that several Black Panthers visited him in his office and complained that his shows perpetuated the stereotypes of black people and poverty. He pivoted and modified the Jeffersons’ story when they got their own show.
The Jeffersons eventually prospered enough to move on up to a loft in Manhattan. As the show’s opening title song put it, they finally got a piece of the pie. The Jeffersons followed a standard sitcom format but also touched on serious social issues, including gun violence and racism. George, the head of the family, lived in an upscale community, but he was not afraid to stand up to or even take swings at bigoted neighbors.
Some of Lear’s sitcoms continued into the ‘80s and made it possible for other black sitcoms and characters to succeed. While not related to his work, many black characters would feature in the ensembles of other ‘70s and ‘80s sitcoms, including Gary Coleman’s Arnold Jackson in Diff’rent Strokes and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs’ Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington in Welcome Back, Kotter. The ‘80s also introduced The Cosby Show, which became an international hit with its principally black cast.
As the ‘80s closed, Family Matters became one of the most popular sitcoms. A spinoff of Perfect Strangers, the show centered around an initially working-class Chicago family. While the series soon revolved around Steve Urkel’s antics, the show explored issues that are just as relevant today as they were in 1989, especially police misconduct – Reginald VelJohnson’s Carl Winslow was a cop in the notorious CPD – and gun violence. Family Matters would be accompanied by other principally black sitcoms throughout the ‘90s, forming a pillar of ABC’s TGIF lineup with Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper and Sister, Sister. The Winslows even crossed over with principally white ensembles from other shows.
Outside TGIF, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air introduced a young Will Smith, and the Wayans brothers got a fairly short and prematurely canceled show of their own. They still took their cues from the old Lear sitcoms and frequently dispensed with laughs in favor of pertinent social messaging. One Fresh Prince episode, in particular, showed racial profiling in action as Will and his cousin Carlton Banks were arrested and jailed for driving a nice-looking car.
After Y2K, black sitcoms became rarer. FOX ran a star vehicle for Bernie Mac in his eponymous show, but it was tough to compete with juggernauts such as Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory. Audiences nevertheless tuned in to Black-ish and series with black leads such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Following the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, sitcoms again examined difficult but necessary issues. Just like Lear’s shows, they used humor to make them easier to process. This has led to a backlash among some viewers and social critics, who deem anything they dislike “woke” despite not knowing what that word even means.
The Wonder Years reboot led to much gnashing of teeth because it focused on a black family in Alabama when the ink on the Civil Rights of 1964 had not even dried. For some white audiences, the thought of introspection and taking a critical look at the past is unsettling, even though that is exactly what the original series did. Furthermore, they are burdened with the fear that non-whites are encroaching on what was once white-only territory.
I would also speculate that many of the same people who threw fits over the reboot were likely to object to black mermaids in a movie clearly intended for seven-year-old girls. Just as school boards in red districts and red state legislatures try to restrict how the history of racism is taught in order to spare white students from feeling anguish, some reactionary elements in American society have thrown tantrums over TV shows that might make them uncomfortable. The thought of confronting certain episodes of their nation’s past or present makes them clutch their pearls.
Ian Abbey, Ph.D.
That pervasive fear is something that Lear addressed in his own shows. Quoted by the New York Times in 1972, when All in the Family was one of the most topical and popular shows on television, Carroll O’Connor described his character Archie as trapped and struggling to cope “with a world that is changing in front of him. He doesn’t know what to do except to lose his temper, mouth his poisons, and look elsewhere to fix the blame for his own discomfort. He isn’t a totally evil man. He’s shrewd. But he won’t get to the root of his problem because the root of his problem is himself, and he doesn’t know it. That is the dilemma of Archie Bunker.”
Archie, George Jefferson, Fred Sanford, James Evans, Carl Winslow, and Will Smith made bigots squirm by holding a mirror up to them on prime time. More importantly, those characters were so effective at conveying the messages of their shows by doing it through some of the most hilarious scenes on television.
Dr. Ian Abbey is an assistant professor of history in the Division of Social Sciences at Prairie View A&M University.