COMMUNITY Fair/ Foul: Are BLK folks currently portrayed in enough of a positive light on Television/Streaming to you right now?

Blackish / Grownish

Which I never watched but I heard they were good shows. It showed positive black family dealing with everyday problems (heavy and light hearted). I don’t know if the show still comes on

Insecure

I watched all the seasons, it was really good. It was about the good and bad of two people dating each other in LA. Even showed everyone at their lowest moments and then rising up to better careers.

Tyler Perry had a show with his elderly characters

Netflix has a show with Mike Epps and Wanda Sykes

Vince Staple show on Netflix is good, not always positive but it’s weird and funny

ATL and Swarm by Danny Glover were both good




In media/ Hollywood
Now today most of the shows just have some black person here or there. Mostly still just the token of the show and to be gay/ lesbian. Sometimes it’s gender swapped or the black version of someone. All the women are to masculine and all the men are to feminine. The black man is gay in every single show or can’t hook up with anyone. The black woman is super tough and acts like a man. The black man and black women can’t be a couple, ever

Then the other hood shows are Power, BMF, and whatever else 50 cent makes about some drug dealers. Snowfall which ended a couple years ago was really good, but that showed us in a negative light.

That’s all I can think of
 
We probably have the best TV representation we've ever had. TBH, the worst representations of ourselves these days are usually the things we put out about ourselves. I can't think of anything white people are putting out with us in it that's worse than all those "Reality" shows with black people acting a fool in every episode.
 
I don't know about sitcoms, but since my kids are pretty young, I've seen a lot of children's TV in the last few years. There's a lot more shows that center around black kids, and a lot more shows with black kids as smart or hard working or wise that I remember from the past. It's not so much built on stereotypes. If I had one complaint, it would be that black boys don't seem to be portrayed to the same extent as black girls and black fathers aren't as present as black mothers in a lot of the shows. That might not be true across the board, but it is the impression I came away with from the shows my girls watched. That's not to say black males aren't portrayed well too. It's just that all the shows seemed to have the black girls as strong leaders, smart, or demonstrating some other good quality. While it was a mixed bag for the boys.
 
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She mainly used 80s/90s sitcoms as examples. I could be wrong, but I don't see sitcoms being made anymore from black or white people.
I watched the same clip and didn't think her complaint was exclusive to sitcoms but black representation in general

If anything,I would push back and say those shows she's putting on a pedestal didn't even really show a lot of the many complexities of the black experience

Outside of an ep here and there, by and large, those shows were very surface level
 
the issue with this is she is speaking in absolutes

there are shows that are exactly what she is talking about

if the issue is there needs to be more, then that's a separate discussion
And only a sith deals in absolutes

We shouldn’t listen to her
 
There needs to be more black shows that aren’t sitcoms though

Like mayor of Kingstown, Yellowstone, landman, Tulsa king, reacher

And all them other shits are all out at the same time and none of them are black shows

Granted these aren’t exactly positive shows so it’s a bit of a tangent but there needs to be more shows for blacks in that vein
 
Is the issue that blacks aren't afforded the opportunity to create positive shows or is it that black people don't support? Would black people watch the black version of E.R?


Let's rate what we currently have available. What are the top 10 black shows on TV/Streaming?
 
Good discussion,

We have The Neighborhood, Blackish, Grownish, Sistas, BET Her, Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns/Paynes, All About the Washington’s, The Upshaws, Bel-Air, Abbot Elementary, then you have Snowfall, 50’s Power Series, ATL, The Vince Staples show, The Equalizer, The Godfather of Harlem and their making the King of New Orleans a spin-off to King of Tulsa.

We have way more representation now than we did then it’s just not in the typical sitcom modern family genre.
 
the issue with this is she is speaking in absolutes

there are shows that are exactly what she is talking about

if the issue is there needs to be more, then that's a separate discussion
and...real talk...black people (not all) don't like positive cerebral shows...that why then don't last long...
 
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