Early Black TV shows like The Beulah Show and Amos 'N' Andy were heavily criticized and boycotted by Black organizations like the NAACP. Many Black people were outraged that these shows featured characters that were either domestics or trifling idiots. The NAACP believed that images such as these strengthened the conclusion among the uninformed that Blacks were inferior, lazy, dumb, and dishonest. The studios(CBS) of the era refused to stop the popular series, claiming that the financial return outweighed any societal concerns, furthermore--they added, these shows employed Black actors and actresses. This trend would continue throughout African-American involvement in television.

The Nat King Cole show, which ran from 1956-1957, was the first variety series hosted by a Black person. Cole was immensely popular and his show garnered strong ratings across the country even though some stations in the South refused to air it. However, NBC was deathly afraid of offending its southern constituency and made several attempts to tailor the show to fit a more "mainstream" sensibility. After a slew of demeaning and unfair demands from the executives like getting rid of his Black back-up singers, not discussing "Negro" issues, and maintaining a strict, formal relationship with white female guests, Nat Cole decided to cancel the series and retain his dignity.

In the turbulent 60's, Black shows experienced a slight change. Because the wretched violence towards the African-American community was broadcast into almost every American home, whites could no longer turn their heads in reckless indifference. For the first time, the nation saw human beings being attacked, beaten, bitten by dogs, and blasted by high-pressure water hoses simply because their skin was darker. Also, whites saw Black people as they were: doctors, engineers, lawyers, factory workers, teachers, mothers, fathers, and children--instead of the earlier, gross depictions of ignorant, jive-talkin' con-men and loud, crass "mammy" figures.

There was tremendous pressure on the industry to present a more balanced and honest portrayal of Black America. One of the shows created in this era was Julia, starring Diahn Carrol. Julia was a single Black mother who was a nurse. She was middle-class and generally shown in the company of sympathetic and "color-blind" white people. Although this show was groundbreaking in its handling of a Black woman and her issues, there was still much to correct. The main complaint about the show was that the father figure was absent. While this did present a fantastic opportunity to explore economic concerns, this started a television staple of absent Black fathers and perpetuated the stereotype of the irresponsible Black male who leaves his family in fear of hard work and accountability.

The 1970's were a watershed decade for African-American TV shows. Throughout this period, there were a few series that addressed racial issues from different segments of American society. The most popular of these was All in the Family, starring Carroll O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Sally Struthers. Although this was not a Black show per se, AITF dealt with racism in the form of bigoted Archie Bunker. The writers masterfully confronted what many critics considered to be the mainstream white attitude towards Black people and other minorities. Archie was the working-class everyman who had a narrow vision of diversity. This series eventually suffered from what made it great: Archie's bigotry. In time, AITF became a shallow reflection of itself by constraining Bunker's character to quick racist jabs and silly facial gestures. His behavior became static, predictable, and just plain offensive.

The late 70's brought The Jeffersons, Good Times, What's Happening, That's my Mama, and Sanford and Son. These series represented a wider cross-section of the inner-city African-American populace than had ever been seen before on TV. Although these series were baby-steps in the right direction, no executive truly wished to escape from the lower-class ghetto sit-com scenario. In addition to being constrained to the ghetto, Good Times, What's Happening, and That's My Mama were single-mother-dominated series. Good Times, which began as a departure from the genre of the Black maternal household by featuring a nuclear family, soon reverted to form with the killing off of the father, John Amos.

These shows had occasional moments of brilliance when dealing with classism and racial injustice. But the majority of the episodes depicted the main characters in smaller-than-life situations unable to rely upon wit to escape their predicament. Black intellect was never central to any of these series. Most often, the males were geared toward vocational occupations(mechanical, electrical, construction) while the women were trained by their mothers in primarily domestic duties. Very rarely(if ever) was the mention of higher academia.

One of the most important events of the history of TV occurred in the form of a 12-hour miniseries about slavery and emancipation called Roots. Roots was the creation of noted author Alex Haley, a Black man who began an arduous journey through the hidden history of slavery and genocide to trace his genealogy. The end result was a astonishing book called "Roots" which gained the attention of David Wolper, a television producer. The mini-series shocked the nation with its frank and unflinching reenactment of the Atlantic Slave Trade. There was no stone left unturned, the series explored the rape, mutilation, and cultural annihilation suffered by the stolen African people. With an all-star cast featuring Ed Asner, Lloyd Bridges, Cicely Tyson, Lorne Green, O.J. Simpson, Louis Gossett Jr., and Levar Burton, Roots went on to become the highest-rated television mini-series ever, drawing in a record 130 million viewers over the course of its run. The producers of the series remarked in later years that Blacks wrote letters that said, "Thank you for telling the truth." Whites generally wrote letters that said, "I never knew. I can't believe that I never knew."

After the cultural complexity and dignity of Roots, the next era would produce both the most offensive and extraordinary TV shows with African-Americans. The 1980's brought forth a Republican administration that kept Black America wary of a racial backlash. In the years before the Cosby Show, there was Different Strokes, Webster, Gimme a Break, and the A-Team. While Black characters were prominent in all of these series, they were rooted in stereotypes long thought to be dormant.

On Different Strokes and Webster, orphaned, midget Black boys got adopted by well-to-do white families. This was a throwback to the benevolent paternalism of the white upper class, an ideological remnant of the Abolitionist Movement. These children were culturally isolated and any attempts made by exterior Black forces to provide insight with their upbringing were met with skepticism and disdain. Eventually, Arnold Drummond and Webster Popadopoulous were fully assimilated into the mainstream.

Gimme a Break, with Nel Carter, was a disgraceful program that effectively resurrected the "Mammy" stereotype of the big, sassy, Black woman who values the well-being of the white children she takes care of over her own personal and social life. Nel was a pop cultural descendant of Hattie McDaniels' character in Gone with the Wind.

Rounding out the parade of insipidity was the popular A-Team, starring Mr. T. This show centered around the exploits of a fugitive Army Commando unit. Mr. T. gained notoriety as the vicious Clubber Lang from Rocky III. The concern was that Mr. T. presented a very bad vision of African-American manhood. Here we had a muscular Black man dressed in shredded denim and numerous gold chains who spent the majority of his time growling about "fools" and his reluctance to fly. Mr. T. existed in the socio-political framework of Booker T. Washington. His physical and mechanical abilities were stressed, not his intellect. Often, he was called upon to build tanks and cannons out of school buses and refrigerators. The one positive attribute of all these shows was that none were set within inner-city ghettos.

The Cosby Show remains to this day the most popular and well done African-American television series ever. Bill Cosby, a comedian who had long before distinguished himself as a national treasure, had decided to create a series unlike any other before. He wanted to show Blacks as people, not third-class entities bound by the color of their skin. He wanted African-American culture to be paramount in the show, but not the basis of it. NBC was initially worried about how well a Black series would do, but at the time NBC had nothing but a few middling sit-coms that attracted mediocre numbers(Cheers, Night Court, and Family Ties) which later became successful primarily because of Cosby's ratings dominance. NBC had no such thing as a "Thursday Night" or a "Must See" before Bill Cosby. The network had trouble attracting advertisers since there were no major ratings grabbers. With the addition of The Cosby Show at the beginning of the evening and Hill Street Blues at the end, NBC's Thursday Night became an industry powerhouse that remains uncontested to this day. Makes you wonder how Bill feels when he turns on the television these days? Critics of Cosby felt that the show broadcast an inacurate and completely fantasy-like world to white America.

Some African-Americans complained that whites who were fans of the show would believe that poverty, inequity, and other social ills were no longer affecting the Black community. Mark Crispin Miller, a Black cultural critic, wrote: "By insisting that Blacks and whites are entirely alike, television denies the cultural barriers that slavery created; barriers that have hardened over years and years, and still exist." Black scholar Henry Louis Gates said: "'Cosby' exposes more white Americans than ever before to the most nobly idealized Blacks in the history of entertainment yet social and economic conditions for the average Black American have not been bleaker in some time."

Although there is some truth to these critiques, the fact remains that Cosby resuscitated NBC and brought forth a new interpretation of African-American life on television. Another show that was ignored but perhaps was more brilliant than Cosby was Tim Reid's Frank's Place. Reid's show dealt with complex intra-racial issues among the Black community. Set in a New Orleans restaurant, Frank's Place discussed Black-on-Black skin color prejudice(light skin vs. dark skin), class warfare, generational conflict, and subtler forms of white racism. Unlike Cosby, Frank's Place contemplated the meaning of African-American existence in this country. CBS buried the show quickly by shuffling its time slot from Thursdays to Fridays to Mondays to Saturdays. Consequently Reid's show was never allowed to find an audience.

The 90's have been interesting to say the least when it comes to African-American television. Now Black people have BET (Black Entertainment Television) as well as a smorgasbord of comedies on WB and UPN. However, there are still major problems. The majority of the Black series currently available have made a circular turn back into the simple-minded ghetto sit-com. Nowhere is there a strong Black dramatic series on any major network. The few that have been made like Roc, South Central, and the very short-lived Under One Roof, were killed because of low ratings and reluctant executives who didn't want to risk money nor time allowing these shows to develop.

Also, missing from the three major networks(ABC, NBC, CBS) is any significant African-American presence of any sort. Most programs on these networks deal with twentysomething upper-class white urbanites whose problems stem from physical misunderstandings and unemotional sexual conquest. Shows like Melrose Place, Friends, 90210, Party of Five, Dharma and Greg, Suddenly Susan, Caroline in the City(what major city has no Black people?), Home Improvement, and Cybil present a world devoid of color. Other than the occasional Latino housekeeper or exotic Asian female, these shows are completely white. Yet there is no complaint from the mainstream about the lack of proper representation. NBC boasts about having a "Woman Only" lineup with no African-American women, since when is femininity solely the realm of white women? While Spin City, Union Square, and Veronica's Closet each have one Black character, they rarely are used for anything more than occasional one-liners and jokes about how they are the one minority in the midst of crazy whites.

The UPN and WB networks are employing what some Black scholars call "underhanded negro tactics" to get ratings. Like Fox Studios, UPN and WB are aiming the majority of their programming and advertising at the urban marketplace(read: African-American and Latino). Within time, Fox grew beyond the Black audience once syndicators and advertisers took them seriously and altered their programming to attract the all-important 18-to-30 female demographic. Nobody should be surprised if in a few years UPN and WB will look indistinguishable from the other networks in their racial makeup. Shows like The Wayans Brothers, Sparks, Homeboys in Outer Space, Goode Behavior, and The Parent 'Hood all suffer tremendously from bad writing. One reason for this is lack of minority writers on these series. There are very few African-American shows with Black creative management, this includes writers, producers, agents, and directors.

This is an extremely dangerous phenomenon for several reasons. First, the majority of whites in America do not live near or congregate with African-Americans in any significant social setting (excluding the work place). Without any other voice to tell them otherwise, many white Americans may be misled into believing that Blacks are inherently criminal, untrustworthy, and foolish. Second, in the destructive wake of the O.J. Simpson verdict, there has been a steady reemergence of resentment towards Blacks; hate groups, ultra-right-wing politics, and bias crimes are on a marked rise in the U.S. It seems that TV has jumped on the bandwagon by erasing Black people from the mainstream pop cultural discourse. Since television usually reflects the fantasies and aspirations of the nation, it makes one wonder if many whites dream of an America where there are no Blacks? Third, younger African-Americans watch these sit-coms vociferously and digest these stereotypical images; which not only eats away at their self-esteem, but provides them with a false sense of priorities (cars, expensive clothes, non-committal relationships, and disrespect for other Black people). Also, Black and White children suffer from the denial and exclusion of African-American contribution to the history and culture of America. Finally, These shows blur the line between what we know is fact and what we believe is fiction. Its not a bad thing to have Black sit-coms, but it is equally important to have other types of series. What makes these comedic images problematic is that they're so repetitive. If you turn on the TV anytime during the day, you'll be treated to many different visions of Anglo-America. Everything from Married With Children to Seinfeld to Murder She Wrote. Its only fair that the industry complies to the request for balance and equity of imagery.

Over seventy-five years ago, Black scholar W.E.B. DuBois spoke about the careful monitoring of our representation in pop culture. He said, "We want everything that is said about us to tell of the best and highest and noblest in us. We insist that our Art and Propaganda be one. We fear that the evil in us will be called racial while in others it is viewed as individual. We fear that our shortcomings are not merely human but foreshadowings and threatenings of disaster and failure."

I wholeheartedly welcome responses or comments about this article.