White Families versus Black Families

I just had a pretty wild thought here on Friday afternoon.

You know, my brother and I, we used to love the show Seinfeld. We don't watch it anymore because we just don't have time for that kind of thing.

But you know, we used to laugh so much and we even now will remember a quote from Seinfeld and memes from Seinfeld and it's just, it was a really funny show.

But the thing is, with anything popular, me and my brother have noticed, with anything popular there's always like a secret agenda, right?

There's always a hidden agenda. Find the lie. That's what we always say. Where's the lie? Right? And so I asked my brother recently,

I said, where's the lie with Seinfeld? You know, it's a hilarious show about a bunch of, you know, New Yorkers.

And so what's the lie, right? And when I asked him that, he said, oh, well, it's that they're degenerates, right?

They're just a bunch of degenerates. And it kind of normalizes debauchery. And he kind of said that, you know, the last episode of the show, which if you remember, they're taken to court for being just, you know, complete, you know us.

But it's kind of like it throws it back in your face. It's like, hey, you idiots, you were laughing at these people and you grew to like these people over the course of six seasons, seven seasons.

And they're degenerates. They're total degenerates. And when he said that to me, I was like, yeah, you know, that could be it. That could be it.

But I started thinking about it. Whatever. But anyway, this morning, I just kind of had a eureka moment.

And you know, like you often hear this with social justice presentations. It's like, well, representation matters.

You remember that Matt Chandler? You don't know what it's like to be walking around Barnes and Noble's looking for a book with a black child in it.

Like I remember I made fun of that at the time. It's a ridiculous statement. But anyway, but you often hear like the way that blacks are represented in the media has always been negative and the way that whites are represented in the media has always been positive.

That's what you hear. And you don't even you don't even question it. It's like like it's just something that they say and you just kind of accept it.

But I got to thinking about this and I don't know that this is true. I haven't done any studies, so I was hoping for your help here.

Think about the shows like the sitcoms that used to exist when when we were young. A lot of people that watch this show are about the same age as me.

You know, a lot of people kind of in in between like, you know, 30 and I don't know, let's call it 50, 55.

A lot of people in that age range. So you might remember some of these shows when you were a kid. Remember Seinfeld, remember

Friends, Married with Children, you know, even Modern Family to some degree.

It's a little bit newer. But all these shows, even Full House to a certain degree, like like it's like there's a little bit of weirdness in every one of those families,

Seinfeld and Friends and Married with Children. There's degeneracy all over the place. Yeah, they had families and stuff, but there was always dysfunction.

You know, Modern Family, Degenerate Show. And they're funny shows, but they're just a bunch of degenerates.

Full House, you know, a lot of people remember that as a very wholesome show, I guess so.

But it was weird. I mean, like, you know, it was just the one guy and his wife, I guess, had died. And then he had two men living in the house with him, with his daughters.

It was just a little bit weird. Not a normal family. It was a it was a weird family. I mean, I'm not saying that they were a bad family.

I'm just saying it was not normal. But then think about the sitcoms with black families.

Right. You think of the Cosby show. You think of Family Matters. You think of what was the there was

Everybody Hates Chris. There was, you know, a Bernie Mac show, all those kinds of shows.

And those those are also funny shows. I used to really like those shows, Sister, Sister, you know, stuff like that.

And they tend to show like intact, you know, nuclear families.

And it's not there's really no depravity in these shows. I mean, Family Matters was more wholesome than Full House, in my opinion.

And Cosby show was very wholesome for even Fresh Prince of Bel -Air. I mean, there's some dysfunction there, but it still presents a very stable nuclear black family, which is nothing wrong with that.

But I'm trying to figure out how the narrative got flipped on its head. It seems to me that that white families that I remember from as a kid were always portrayed as dysfunctional.

Not always. I mean, you know, what was that one? Tim, the tool man, Taylor, that was a, you know, functional, you know, home and things like that.

So there's exceptions. I'm not saying this is like a hard and fast rule, but, you know, I wonder, like, if you actually did a real study here of like really how blacks were portrayed in some of these shows that we all watched when we were kids versus how, you know,

Ibram Kendi X would say that they were portrayed. I wonder how much truth there is to this. It certainly seems to me like just, you know, anecdotally that I just don't remember it being that way.

I remember the black families were portrayed very nobly, you know, very few dysfunctions and white families tended to be portrayed as dysfunctional and not even just the white trash like like Mary was chosen was white trash family, you know, stuff like that.

But like, think about like, you know, the Seinfeld. Those are rich people, you know, that but they're degenerates, friends, rich people, but they're degenerates.

It's like, I don't know, like, how what am I missing here? I have to be missing something. I don't know.

Anyway, I hope you found this video interesting. And let me know what you think in the comments section if I'm missing something, because I feel like I have to be

I'm trying to think out loud here. But where which which which show with the black family was the one where they were portrayed so, so poorly?

I just I don't know. Even everybody hates Chris. They lived in Bed -Stuy, which is not a rich area, you know, because like Fresh Prince.

OK, they lived in Beverly Hills or whatever. And, you know, Cosby show is a rich, you know, he's a doctor or whatever.

But, you know, in everybody hates Chris. They were in Bed -Stuy, Bed -Stuy do or die.

Not a rich area, you know, kind of a ghetto. But they were still like a regular family, you know, intact and all that.

I'm not saying that's bad. That's good. I'm fine with that. But but it just goes contrary to the narrative that you typically hear.