Half a century of Black TV

Bethonie Butler’s new book "Black TV" showcases the 50-year evolution of television series centered on Black characters. From The Jeffersons, to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Abbott Elementary.

Today, Butler says the evolution of Black TV continues. Not just with actors, but who's creating new series.

"We’re sort of in a golden era of Black TV now, with creators like Issa Rae, Quinta Brunson, Donald Glover. It’s just a really exciting time."

Today, On Point: Half a century of Black TV.

Bethonie Butler, author of "Black TV: Five decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond." Previously a reporter for the Washington Post, where she covered television and pop culture.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: This is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarti.

And now, here's your host, Don Cornelius.

DON CORNELIUS: Hello and welcome aboard. You're right on time for another magnificent ride on the Soul Train. Be coming right back at you with a big smash by the mighty Temptations, right after some very important messages.

CHAKRABARTI: In 1971, Soul Train began its 35-year run on American television.

The pioneering music and dance show featured the best of Black talent and was recognized as one of the most influential television shows of its time. And the influence of Black TV on American culture continues. It's a half century path chronicled by pop culture writer Bethonie Butler in her new book, "Black TV: Five decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond."

And Bethonie Butler joins us today. Welcome to On Point, Bethonie.

BETHONIE BUTLER: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: I actually would wonder if we could start with the influence of Black TV on you. What's the sort of earliest show that you remember loving, that featured either Black stories or I suppose maybe a long time ago there weren't that many Black writers allowed into the writer room, but writer's room, but your formative experiences with Black TV.

BUTLER: So I grew up on Family Matters, The Fresh Prince really that early, the early '90s. There was an explosion of Black sitcoms, and I grew up on those. And it's really important to see yourself on TV and that was the start of that for me.

CHAKRABARTI: And why did you decide to write this book now?

BUTLER: I think it's an interesting time to look at Black television, you know it's a golden era in Black television and both in terms of the shows that are on. But also, in terms of the creators, in the last decade, we've seen new shows from Issa Rae, Donald Glover. Of course, Quinta Brunson with Abbott Elementary.

And it's just a really interesting time. And I think that Black creators are getting the chance to be truly innovative and to be in control of their projects. We're going to talk about all those A list Black creators a little bit later in the show. And I just, I re-binged season one of Abbott Elementary (LAUGHS) just over the weekend, Bethonie.

It's really a show that's impossible to stop watching. But let's go back in time. And I actually just want to start by talking with the show that we introduced, because it was right there at the top and that was Soul Train. What was so important or actually continues to be so important about Soul Train?

BUTLER: Yeah. Soul Train is a celebration of Black culture. Don Cornelius, when he started Soul Train, and it was a local show in Chicago. Originally, he wanted it to be a place where Black entertainers were given this unprecedented platform to show off their talents. And you really got the sense, if you rewatch it, read about it, you get the sense that it's like a homecoming for Black entertainers.

And it grew so popular so quickly that it ended up going national. And it was described to me as appointment television, especially for kids and teens who were growing up at the time.

CHAKRABARTI: I actually just want to play a quick clip of an interview that I did last August, and it's actually with Damita Jo Freeman.

She's one of the original Soul Train dancers. It was for a special event in Los Angeles. So here's a little bit of that conversation where I talk about a scene from one of the episodes of Soul Train where Damita Jo Freeman is dancing on stage next to none other than James Brown.

CHAKRABARTI: And get this, the godfather of soul, standing behind Damita Jo. And he's looking at her, looking at her up and down. You can Google this, you'll find it in a second. Looking at her up and down, and he looks like, he's like, I do not know what to do. I'll not be able to keep up with her.

FREEMAN: He didn't, and I didn't know what I was doing either because I never heard that song before. This was the very first time that everybody, the world was going to hear Super Bad. And so when I went up on the stairs. When he, when we started, it was like, "Okay, keep going. He loves to play that beat. Okay, keep going." So in my head, I'm looking, I'm smiling. I have no idea what's coming outta his mouth.

And when his mouth came, you could feel the music when it drops. So therefore, I said, "Oh, changed. I start dancing." And I just kept going and his smile and I said, "oh Lord, I'm in trouble. I'm doing something. I don't know what I'm doing." But I just threw in the robot, and I threw in so many different things.

CHAKRABARTI: It's a work of art that you're doing there. I'm telling you.

CHAKRABARTI: So that was Damita Jo Freeman, one of the original dancers on Soul Train. I spoke with her in Los Angeles last year. And Bethonie, first of all, Damita Jo Freeman is as vital and alive today as she was back in the 70s. But the reason why I wanted to play that clip is not only to celebrate her. But you note that she says there that it was the first time everybody, basically the whole world, was going to hear James Brown sing Superbad.

And to me, that underscores one of the main, one of the really important things about Soul Train, was that it introduced some of the best of Black music, not just to Black audiences, but the world as a whole. What do you think about that?

BUTLER: Absolutely. Yeah. It was unprecedented visibility for Black entertainers.

And then also just a showcase of Black joy and Black culture, to tune in every Saturday morning as it aired in Chicago. And experience that it was so important and so influential, and still really influential, as you mentioned. So that means that Soul Train had appeal not just to Black audiences, but to all audiences, specifically to white audiences, as well.

Back in the 70s, was that a requirement for Black TV? Versus hopefully what came later, which you didn't have to necessarily appeal to white audiences to have viability on television?

BUTLER: I think in some sense it was. That there, and I think there continues to be that question of, is this universal or not?

In terms of Soul Train, it was just so immediately popular and resonated. And the other thing that was special about Soul Train is they had a national sponsor in Johnson Products, the maker of Afro Sheen. And that sort of reinforced this pride in being Black, this joy in being Black, that Soul Train was all about.

CHAKRABARTI: I want to move to the show that you begin the book with, and that is Julia, a sitcom that ran for three seasons starting in 1968. First of all, can you tell us, Bethonie, what Julia meant to you?

BUTLE Yeah, it's interesting. So obviously I didn't grow up with Julia, but I've written a lot about Scandal from Shonda Rhimes, and it was really interesting to me.

Shonda Rhimes, she actually included Julia Baker as a character name in Scandal. And that was the moment that I realized how influential Diahann Carroll and Julia had been, not only to Shonda Rhimes, but to Kerry Washington and also just the whole trajectory of Black TV, Julia was the first sitcom to really showcase a Black family. It was Julia and her son. We're inside their home, we're in their living room, we're experiencing sort of day to day with them. So that was really unique at the time and just we know that Diahann Carroll was just so influential to Black creatives and Black talent.

And so to see that through line from Julia in 1968 all the way up to Scandal and to have Shonda Rhimes say, "This made such an impact on me, I had to include it in my show."

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So let's listen to a little bit of Julia. Now, we should note that, as you said, it starred Diahann Carroll, launched in 1968.

It was a story about a widowed nurse and mother. So here's a clip from the first season of the show when Julia, the title character, played by Diahann Carroll, is interviewing for that job as a nurse. And she walks into the office of a doctor who, let's be frank, is a comically rude and elderly white man.

DOCTOR: Julia Baker, huh?

JULIA: Yes, sir. May I sit down?

DOCTOR: No. This is not a social hour. I believe you came here to beg me for a job.

JULIA: I came here at your invitation to be interviewed for a position as a nurse. I don’t beg for anything.

DOCTOR: I’ll keep that in mind.

CHAKRABARTI: So Bethonie, we even hear in that scene, but in the show overall, what is it doing?

Or what stories is Julia telling that was so unusual for the time regarding Black characters on TV?

BUTLER: Yeah, as you said, Julia was a nurse. Julia spotlighted the Black middle class, which had really yet to be shown on television. That was one of the few things that creator Hal Kanter and Diahann Carroll agreed on. That they wanted this show to be about the Black middle class, and they wanted viewers to see this upwardly mobile Black woman, a professional woman. Prior to that, Black women were relegated often to servant roles on screen, and so Julia was a big deal.

CHAKRABARTI: It's interesting that you say that Diahann Carroll and Hal Kanter came to an agreement on what the show would be about, because I note that Hal Kanter, big name in middle 20th century television. But he also had previously created or worked on series like Amos 'N' Andy that really peddled in other unflattering Black stereotypes.

I found it really interesting, too, that he had been involved with Amos 'N' Andy. And he did see Julia as a way to I guess move the needle forward and not be so stereotypical in depicting Black people. But we also know that he and Diahann Carroll went back and forth on a lot of things on this show.

Diahann Carroll, like many Black creators and talent, she felt such a responsibility to her community. And she was so thoughtful about the script and the storylines, and she and Hal Kanter had a lot of back and forth.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Bethonie, we were talking about the importance of Julia as an early example of the success of Black television.

I want to pick up with that with a clip from Diahann Carroll herself. Because she talked about some of the controversy that surrounded Julia when it first splashed on American television screens. And here she is in an interview with the Television Academy Foundation in 2011. And Diahann Carroll talks about how the cast and crew felt as the show began in 1968.

DIAHANN CARROLL: Everyone was on the line, and everyone was scared. Because we were saying to the country, we're going to present a very upper middle class Black woman raising her child and her major concentration will not be about suffering in the ghetto. And we don't know if you're going to buy it, but this is what we're going to do.

CHAKRABARTI: Now, Bethonie, I know that one of the great points of your book is to not so much worry about what would white audiences think, but to tell the story of these Black actors and writers and creators, to celebrate their achievements. But as Diahann Carroll says there, at least in the early decades of Black tv, it seemed like it was inescapable, this concern of how would it play with white audiences.

Has that concern been completely eliminated now or not?

BUTLER: Unfortunately, I don't think so. I think there's still a question of, Does the show, does it resonate universally? And oftentimes, it's a tone-deaf question because I think that, especially when we look at sitcoms, what is more universal than family?

What is more universal than friendship, or even going to a job and working and having that experience? So I do think there's been a lot of progress. But I feel like there's still more to go.

CHAKRABARTI: But there's this theme, maybe it's not audiences, maybe I should focus on the people that allow stuff to be on TV, right?

The producers and the entertainment executives, because there's a theme that runs through a lot of your book about who were the ultimate, or maybe are the ultimate arbiters of how Blackness is represented on TV. And it's not necessarily Black executives, right?

BUTLER: Especially in the beginning, as we're talking about, Julia, it was really in the hands of white creators and white writers.

So on that note, we have come far. There's much more diversity in writers' rooms and we have Black creators who are able to tell their own stories with pride and with authenticity.

CHAKRABARTI: Bethonie, I wonder if you could tell us a story. From your book, Black TV, about Redd Foxx. And I didn't know about this at all, but you tell a story about Foxx's 1965 appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Can you recount that for us?

BUTLER: Yes. So this is a throughline that I really loved. Redd Foxx was, this was years before Sanford and Son, but he was on Johnny Carson's show and he was asked, who's the hottest comic working right now? And without hesitation, he says Flip Wilson. And so of course, Redd Foxx is speaking to middle America.

Many of whom have never heard of Flip Wilson at that time. He was a comic who had traveled what was called the Chitlin' Circuit. So a network of Black clubs in the United States. And he had a following from that. But he wasn't super well known. After Redd Foxx shouts him out on the Tonight Show, within months, he is doing a set on the Tonight Show.

And then you see, it was interesting to see in ads for Flip Wilson's subsequent shows, Johnny Carson would show up. So it would be like Johnny Carson's comedy find, even though it was technically Redd [Foxx]. And then, there was another ad that I saw that, "Johnny's used him three times since August."

So it was this very visible platform that Redd Foxx is able to give to a fellow Black comedian. And that sort of changed the game for Flip Wilson.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. And Redd Foxx himself continued to have a major impact on opening doors for Black talent, right? He, correct me if I'm wrong, but he hired Richard Pryor?

BUTLER: Yeah. So Redd Foxx fought for Richard Pryor and his writing, his longtime writing partner, Paul Mooney to write for Sanford and Son. And there was this back-and-forth tension Between Pryor and Mooney and network executives who were skeptical of this duo, even though they had experience writing comedy, and they were known to an extent.

But yeah, I think that really illustrates the tendency for Black creators and talent to be underestimated. The other thing that Redd Foxx did was he advocated for Black people behind the scenes. Not just in the writer's room. He brought Stan Lathan, whose name is probably very well known to people as a go to director for sitcoms. And also, he's directed a lot of, if not all of, Dave Chappelle's comedy specials, but he really got his start in episodic television.

All in Sanford and Son.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Wow. I want to just get a little understanding about what it was about comedy that opened so many doors for Black talent. But let's hear a couple of bits from, or scenes from some other sitcoms. How about Martin? Starring, of course, comedian Martin Lawrence, excuse me. My mistake. It aired on Fox for five seasons in the mid 90s, and we have a clip here from an episode where a plumber comes to fix Martin's toilet and ends up passing out and dying on Martin's bathroom floor. He and his friends have some trouble getting the police to respond and so Martin eventually, Martin calls 9/11 and tries to convince the police that the plumber is in fact white.

So here's part of that scene.

MARTIN: Well I mean I can prove it. Ask me anything. Ok fine. They wanna know, what America’s favorite pie is.

FRIEND 1: Oh, sweet potato pie. Sweet potato pie.

FRIEND 2: No, no, no, bean pie. Go with bean pie.

FRIEND 3: No, no it’s apple pie. Baby, say apple pie.

GROUP: Good answer, good answer.

MARTIN: We’re gonna go with apple pie. Got it! [Cheers]

CHAKRABARTI: So that's from Martin. And I made an error a little earlier saying that Martin was trying to convince the authorities that the plumber was white. When actually, obviously, he's trying to convince them that he's white in order to get the police to respond to come to his house.

So that's from Martin. And here's another one. This is Roc. It's a sitcom that aired on Fox, again, in the early '90s. And in fact, you write in the book, Bethonie, about how Roc mixed comedy with some heavy, decidedly unfunny themes. Can you tell us a little bit more about that before we hear this scene?

BUTLER: Yeah. So one of the episodes that I looked at in the book was an episode that featured Tommy Davidson, and it was about a homeless couple. The woman was expecting, and she was caught digging through the family's trash on Roc. And so Roc and his family invite them in. And it starts this conversation about, they're homeless, but they're expecting and how do they get into this situation? And so there's a lot of conversation about their circumstances and some back and forth between Tommy Davidson's character and Roc. And it is a somber episode. It does not have a happy ending. It is very, there's a lot of, excuse more drama, I think is what I mean to say.

And for so often, Black television was really limited to comedy. And so you can see throughout history, Black creators are trying to incorporate more dramatic elements and being held back.

CHAKRABARTI: Here's a clip from that episode. And the woman you mentioned, she's talking about getting back on her feet soon.

WOMAN: Baby not coming for a month and a half. By then, Donald say he gonna have a job, and we gonna get medical insurance again.

POP: Obviously she missed Bush’s state of the union address. You know, people like her wouldn’t be in this situation if we had our priorities straight. We spend billions of dollars to go to Mars, and we don’t spend a dime on the homeless and hungry people right here.

ROC: Yeah, I know pop but what’s the answer?

POP: Well, send Bush to Mars. [LAUGHTER]

CHAKRABARTI: Bethonie, you said just a second ago that so much of the early part of the 20th century success of Black TV was through comedy. Why do you think that is?

BUTLER: I think, comedy has been important to Black culture and to Black life. But I also think that from an industry standpoint, Black creators were really limited to comedy in those early days.

And we've seen this at the box office as well, where there's this sense that Black people only want to watch comedy. And of course, that's not true. There are very universal experiences that have been explored beautifully through drama, and it really was not until the mid-aughts, so like 2010 going forward, that we saw this influx of Black dramas.

CHAKRABARTI: It feels like there's two things going on there. At the same time, as you said, that the thinking was that Black audiences would only like comedies, but also could it be that comedy was seen as more acceptable to other audiences, as well? And that would be the limit of the kinds of Black stories they would want to see.

BUTLER: Yes, I do think that is true to an extent. That because Black creators are not in control of their projects, they are limited to white writers and white creators telling their stories and advocating for those stories. Yes, I think that it was difficult for them to push beyond comedy, but what they were able to do with comedy, I think, was tremendous.

And as that Roc clip showed, they were able to infuse some social commentary and get to the crux of what was going on in our culture.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh, 100%. I couldn't agree more because, I'm thinking of other shows. You talked about Richard Pryor before, and I also remember watching In Living Color all the time and laughing while hearing a lot of truths about America. What else? You mention David Chappelle, too. So it's almost like they're Trojan horses through like the brilliance of their comedy, just bringing really challenging issues to the forefront for Black audiences and others.

But at the same time, though, it seems as I read your book, it takes time for the importance of Black drama to be recognized on TV. And I think a lot of people, the earliest example they might recall of being totally gripped by authentic stories told by a Black dramatist was from Roots, of course, in 1977.

So I must play a clip of that completely legendary miniseries. It spanned U.S. history from the enslavement of Black people through the Civil War and Reconstruction. So here's a scene where the masterful LeVar Burton, who played Kunta Kinte, refuses to accept the new name given by his enslaver.

Your name is Toby. You're going to learn to say your name. Let me hear you say it. What's your name?

KUNTA KINTE: Kunta. Kunta Kinte.

CHAKRABARTI: It still gives me chills hearing that scene so many years later. Bethonie, can you talk about your view of what made Roots so important?

BUTLER: Yeah. That's such a memorable scene. I think it's memorized by heart.

Roots was, as you said, it was the first really Black drama to air on TV. It was a gripping mini-series that had the entire country, it was one of those first collective water cooler moments. Where the next day everybody is talking about Roots. And that includes President Ronald Reagan at the time.

He had an opinion about, he said that it was interesting that so many people could watch, stop their lives and watch TV at that time. And then also he was struck by how the Black characters were the good people and the white characters were the bad people in the story.

And the fact that he commented on that, that really blew me away. But it just goes to show how popular and what a big cultural moment Roots was.

CHAKRABARTI: And it seemed like it, as a nation, I don't think it's wrong that we sometimes measure what is socially urgent by what appears on television. And the fact that this very raw examination of slavery and its impact on enslaved people, that's the thing, right?

It wasn't necessarily about the Civil War, or it wasn't about U.S. history writ large. It was really about Black people and what enslavement did to them and their families. And so that is another thing that made it seem like a breakthrough. Because it's not that often that we see, or at least at that time, we didn't see that authentic treatment of the darker sides of U.S. history, Bethonie?

BUTLER: Absolutely. I think that really was the first time that America saw how cruel slavery was. And it also was the first time that we had those discussions as a country. And so it was really influential and really important.

CHAKRABARTI: Can you tell me more then of how you've seen dramatic Black TV continue to grow and change since then?

BUTLER: Yeah. Another interesting thing to note about Roots is that it did not, I think there was an expectation that it would lead to more dramas and more dramatic roles for Black talent. And it really didn't. There was, sitcoms were still the name of the game at that time.

It wasn't until the mid-aughts when we start to see Scandal and Shonda Rhimes's sort of slate of shows. So also thinking about How to Get Away with Murder, BET had Being Mary Jane starring Gabrielle Union. And we start to see more shows that skewed dramatically.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: I just want to give a nod to several other of the extremely influential shows that comprise the canon of Black TV.

The Cosby Show needs no mention. It was the No. 1 television show by Nielsen ratings for five of the years that it ran, and it ran from 1984 to 1992. But let's hear some sound here from another great show. This is The Jeffersons, which aired from 1975 to 1985 on CBS, created by Norman Lear.

And it was a spinoff of All in the Family.

MR. JEFFERSON: What you got to say Florence?

FLORENCE: Oh yeah. I think you’d have made a great sheriff in the old west. Why, you would’ve got rid of all them bad guys.

MR. JEFFERSON: Yup.

FLORENCE: They’d have took one look at you and died laughing. [LAUGHS]

CHAKRABARTI: Scene from the Jeffersons there. Then as I mentioned, I used to love watching In Living Color. It ran on Fox for five seasons, beginning in 1990, created by Keenen Ivory Wayans. And here we have one sketch which brings together In Living Color and Redd Foxx's Sanford and Son, which we discussed earlier. And here's Damon Wayans spoofing that classic comedy.

Hi. This is Red Foxx with your 1990 tax tips. Tip number one. Pay ‘em. Tip number two. If the IRS man show up at your house, lie. About everything. Especially, who you is.

CHAKRABARTI: That's from In Living Color. And Bethonie, just for you, we've got The Fresh Prince here, of course. Will Smith starred in that classic comedy; it ran for six seasons on NBC in the early '90s.

WILL: Boy, Uncle Phil and Aunt Viv sure hyped up about going down to their old neighborhood, huh?

CARLTON: Oh brother, I can just hear them now. Look, kids, this is where we lived when we first got married. And this is the park where we walked little Hilary.

WILL: And oh look, there’s the pet store where we bought little Carlton. [LAUGHS]

CHAKRABARTI: Still funny. Bethonie, let's move into the modern era. What do you think are some of the shows on now that you find is very defining of what Black TV is today?

BUTLER: Just last year alone, we saw Swarm from Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, who was a writer on Atlanta.

And Swarm was delving into the parasocial relationships that fans have with celebrities. And what struck me about Swarm, one is that I don't think we would have seen Swarm if Atlanta hadn't been on air. I think Atlanta was really innovative and surreal in a way that Black television historically has not been allowed to be on the industry side. So that was new. And then, when swarm premieres, it has a lot of pointed cameos. We saw Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris Jackson, in a role that sort of poked fun at her sort of public profile. There was a role for Leon from the classic Robert Townsend movie The Five Heartbeats.

So Leon had a cameo and I think that's a classic trademark of Black TV. Where there are pointed, walk-on moments for legendary Black entertainers. You played a clip earlier from The Jeffersons with Marla Gibbs. And Marla Gibbs is someone who I think when she shows up on a sitcom, it's just such an incredible moment.

She had a cameo on Scandal where she walks in and she just says, "Where's the Black lady?" And it was just such a beautiful moment. Because it was acknowledging, not just Olivia Pope, the character, but also Kerry Washington and Shonda Rhimes and this show that they had created, and that resonated with so many Black people and Black women in particular.

CHAKRABARTI: Can you talk about that more? Because so many of the names you've mentioned about who are like really standing out in television today, not only as actors, but as showrunners and producers and writers are Black women. Is that a change from the first, let's say, quarter century of the period of television that you focus on in the book?

BUTLER: I do think that it was a progression. And I should mention, one of the earliest Black dramas that I did not mention before was Soul Food. And that was an adaptation of the movie Soul Food. And so it had a built-in audience. That movie had been really successful. But in terms of drama, that was rare.

That was, I think that was 2000. And so that was created by a woman. And there are several, I think in the last 20 years, we've seen a lot of television from Black women. But as you've mentioned, Issa Rae is a name that comes immediately to mind. Issa Rae had created a web series called The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl.

And this was, mid-aughts. And so there really hadn't been, there had been nothing like that on television. And her web series really made people realize that this was new and fresh and it was resonating with young Black millennials. This was their experience. And it took several years before Issa Rae was able to translate that to television.

And of course, she ended up creating Insecure with Larry Wilmore, a veteran of Black TV. He's involved in so many shows that I talk about in my book. But they created Insecure. And Insecure just became, it's so groundbreaking. And I think that what Issa Rae did and she was really, she was really intentional in doing this, that this was a show just about regular Black people living their lives.

It wasn't about them being Black. But you just saw their experience and watching it as a Black person, as a Black millennial seeing Issa's character go through some of the same things that I went through, challenges at work. Challenges with friends. And you come into your own in your twenties and that show really captures that.

And of course, it's off the air, but you can still watch it on streaming. And I think that's the other thing that makes this era so special, is that a lot of these shows are resonating with new audiences and younger generations who are discovering the shows from the '90s. Who are watching Living Single and Moesha and seeing themselves and these stories are still resonating.

CHAKRABARTI: There's another one that it's actually in the title of your book, Black-ish, that we haven't mentioned or talked about in any detail. Tell me about why you think the story of Black-ish is important and understanding this half century trajectory of Black TV.

BUTLER: Yes.

Black-ish, that's from Kenya Barris and he was really inspired by Norman Lear. So I think it's a great example. Norman Lear became almost shorthand for the topical sitcom. And it wasn't just Kenya Barris. I think Gerard Carmichael of the Carmichael show, also really inspired by Norman Lear.

But I think in terms of Black-ish, when Black-ish premiered, it was really controversial, mostly because of the title. There was a lot of reaction to Black-ish and just the idea that there would be a show called that. But I think what was really special about Black-ish, it was on prime time.

It really connected with this moment in our culture. Kenya Barris said that Black-ish for him was about sort of his experience growing up. He grew up poor. He grew up never imagining that he would be as successful as he is and have the money that he had. And so his family, his children, specifically, were exposed to things that he had not been exposed to when he was young.

And so Blackness was sort of him grappling with that status of being upper middle class, even wealthy. And how his children's lives looked different from his. And also, the similarities. The thing I love about Black-ish is that there were episodes that really delved into these cultural moments.

There were episodes about the presidential election. There were episodes about police violence. And how, specifically, not just police violence and that it happened, but specifically how to talk about it with kids. And that goes back to, the question of, Is it universal?

And I think that was an episode where everyone could take something away from that episode.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. On that point, there has been some criticism of Black TV today from certain Black scholars. And not of your book, but what they see on Black TV today. For example, John Blake wrote very long analysis.

It appeared on CNN and the title of the analysis was When hope becomes a four-letter word: What’s missing from today’s TV shows that deal with race.

And here's a little excerpt of what he says. He says that as a Black child of the 1970s, he grew up with shows such as The Jeffersons. And he says, "I miss one storytelling element from that era that is missing from contemporary Black TV series.

Hope. Not a naive hope, he says, but a muscular type of hope that maintained that though racism was persistent, America would eventually transcend its racial divisions. What do you think about that?

BUTLER: That's interesting. Black-ish had an episode actually called hope. And I think, to his point, that episode was more about Black hope and Black joy in the community.

As it existed in America right now. So I think for Black-ish, it's less about the hope that we will transcend racial barriers. And more that Black people are secure in their own cultural journey and that our stories are part of American history.

They're part of what America is and what makes it the country that it is today. There's another Black-ish episode that goes back to slavery. It's a musical episode and it talks about Juneteenth. Juneteenth, of course, has been in the news a lot in the last few years. It became a national holiday.

Before that, Black-ish really gave an overview of what Juneteenth was and what it means to Black people. And so I think, for me, that's an element of hope that I see on TV. Just in telling our stories and making them authentic and making them true to who we are as Black people.

Then in addition, he also says that maybe just to press this point a little bit more. He claims that a lot of modern Black TV, his words, quote-unquote, confuses hopelessness with authentic Blackness. Your thoughts on that?

BUTLER: It's interesting. I think that especially just looking at the last year alone in Black television, we had The Other Black Girl on Hulu which was a thriller.

And I think that it's just really exciting time in Black TV. I don't know that I would agree with that, that we're focusing on hopelessness. I think that there is a diversity of stories on Black TV that has never existed before.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. I will say that he cites one exception to that, and it's Abbott Elementary. Quinta Brunson's just marvelous series. And for folks who haven't seen it, it's just this terrific show about teachers like very heroically working with students in a underfunded public school that largely has Black students in it.

It's a wonderful, really wonderful series. And I know that you're a fan of it, Bethonie. You want to tell me why?

BUTLER: I just think it's a really, like you said, it's optimistic and it's a really feel-good story. The other thing about Abbott Elementary that I love is the role that Quinta Brunson created for Sheryl Lee Ralph.

CHAKRABARTI: Yes.

BUTLER: And Sheryl Lee Ralph, of course, was on Moesha.

She's very familiar to audiences of that show. But Abbott Elementary has given her flowers in a way.

CHAKRABARTI: She won an Emmy, right?

BUTLER: Yeah, she won an Emmy. She gave a beautiful speech, and that moment captured so much about what I love about Black TV as a sort of universe or canon. As you mentioned, that this throughline from Moesha to Abbott Elementary and seeing people get their due through Black TV and through other Black creators who grew up and were inspired by them.

CHAKRABARTI: Do you think that maybe this golden age of Black TV, as you call it, has been or has had some help accelerating because there are just many more platforms on which creators can put their shows on? Would such a thing have been possible if we were still back in the age of just network TV or maybe even just network and cable TV?

BUTLER: Absolutely. I do think that factors in, the moment that my book starts, we're talking about three, four networks. Now there are so many more options. And Black creators have talked about that, Sort of there are more opportunities to get their shows on air. I think the question is, what happens once they're on air or they're on a streaming network?

Do they run for five, six seasons? Do the creators get to tell the stories that they envisioned happening or are they canceled after one season? Is it seen as the Black show that's on at the time, or is it seen as part of a diversity of storytelling that gets to, Black people are not a monolith.

So we have many stories to tell.