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by G. Brown

There are fans who say they can’t live without their weekly fix in their Cookie or Oliva Pope addictions.  The shows have become a part of TV history because of phenomenal ratings success featuring Black casts and Black actresses/actors in lead roles. While shows like the aforementioned and a handful of others celebrate groundbreaking success because of Black viewers, there are critics who think the shows are doing more harm than good.

One viewer says he will no longer watch “Empire”, “Scandal” or “Power” because as he phrased it, “my eyes were opened” to the damage these popular shows are causing to the”fabric, culture and perception of the African-American community.”

The viewer said he’s enjoyed these shows in the past but realized that “once again Hollywood is showing us the only way to get out of the hood…is through drugs and music” or to sleep with powerful, married men like the President as depicted on “Scandal”. The viewer’s criticism of “Power” was that it condoned drugs, gang violence and any means necessary to reach the top no matter who you step on to get there.

The viewer’s word out of context might seem disjointed and judgemental, but he has a point worth considering.  Do we want to be entertained at the price of the future of the Black community? The question may seem a bit overly dramatic, but consider your child is watching Cookie and thinking ‘she’s on TV, she’s important, I want to be like her when I grow up’.

For adults, it seems harmless, but we can discern fiction from fact.  For younger generations, real and fake are sometimes hard to separate as they are still forming their mental muscles to divide right from wrong, good from evil.  An adult can watch Olivia Pope and see her as a character in a show, a younger mind may see her as a role model.

The networks that air these shows get behind them with slick promotions, prime viewing schedules, and top casts to make the shows irresistible. It’s TV programming us to think that Black women are overbearing, loud, greedy, promiscuous, ostentatiously attired and somewhat amoral while Black men are depicted as greedy, ruthless, incapable of being good fathers, willing to steal, kill and destroy anyone or anything to get to the top. Twenty-first-century stereotypes that have replaced the slaves and maids of yesteryear, but that are just as damaging to the world’s image of Blacks.

Some of the shows are pitted against other Black cast shows that are more positive depictions of the Black family such as “Black-ish” and “The Carmichael Show”. Too many shows often picture the Black family fragmented and with the deck stacked against them because of no father and economic depression like “Good Times” and “What’s Happening”. A once sacred show that was strong on Black family values, “The Bill Cosby Show”, has been desecrated and the Huxtable family wiped from syndication because of the Cosby sex scandal. Yet, the White family depicted in “7th Heaven” remains intact and in syndication despite its father figure portrayed by Stephen Collins’ admission that he molested children.

The viewer who started this conversation says he has decided to stop watching the negative images that some network shows want us to support that tear down the Black community and gravitate towards shows that offer a more positive perspective of characters like “Rosewood”.

Fifty Cent recently commented that “Empire’s” ratings are slipping because people are tired of the gay agenda being pushed at them. 

What do you think? Is it just entertainment or is are some of these shows harming the Black community?