I finally got the chance to watch the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Reunion and I have so many feelings. I loved this show so much as a kid that I directed a play based on the show in 5th grade - literally writing the script, collecting my friends to play the various parts, rehearsing endlessly and then finally performing it in front of our classmates.
But the part I missed as a kid that I now see clearly as an adult was how ahead of its time the show was in depicting the Black experience for a broader American audience. There are so many examples and the reunion episode featured a few, including the time when Will and Carlton were pulled over by the police.
The more I think about it, the more upset I am. How were we not incensed by the injustice when we watched that episode then? I also remember the subject being covered by Family Matters, another hit TV series.
I know I was just a kid and these storylines didn’t fully register in my young mind, but how is it that this narrative was being told on national TV and we were just OK with it and are only now reckoning with this issue?
I already know the answer to the question - a lot had to happen from then until now for these issues to boil to the top, the pandemic played a part, social changes take time, etc. - but it’s still so infuriating. I wonder if the medium of TV (where there’s always a resolution of some sort, where the moment is fleeting and it’s over once the episode is over) makes it less effective to really have an impact on its audience. I think about music that has been more powerful for me in delivering the message of pain, injustice and ugliness of African American history (thinking specifically about when I was exposed to songs like Living for the City by Stevie Wonder or Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday).
At the same time, I was just watching this video -- How Far Have We Come? Black Teens vs. Grandparents by the amazing folks at Jubilee. The conversation between the two generations is fascinating and they get to some very real stuff at 18:17 when the question of trauma comes up. One of the participants talks about PTSD as being “present” traumatic stress and how its reoccurring trauma experiencing today’s headlines around police brutality: “I feel like I’m in a domestic violence relationship with law enforcement.” The conversation then moves onto generational trauma from slavery. One participants says, “My mother beat me because her mother beat her. And her mother beat her because her mother beat her because they did not want the masters on the plantation to beat their children, so they said pleaded with them and said ‘no no I’mma teach them’ so they beat their children so someone else wouldn’t beat them.”
These are my stream of conscious thoughts on the last day of Black History Month. May we continue to talk openly about the roots of America’s racial discriminatory systems until we make significant change.





