Just like every little girl who grew up watching The Cosby Show, I wanted to be just like Clair Huxtable and marry myself a Cliff. You know, someone who was educated, funny and could scat like Ella Fitzgerald — my own little homegrown Renaissance man. But the question I’m left asking myself sitting here as a grown woman, married, with children is how many of those ideals are really what little Black girls and boys have to look forward to when they get old enough to begin to choose mates and try and form their own happily ever afters. Will little Black boys be able to find wholesome women, who like Clair, strove for excellence, was a great mother, could sing with the best of the jazz greats, was the epitome of class and had a great head on her shoulders? And will little Black girls be able to find a mate like Cliff who is dependable, supportive, involved with his kids and treats her like precious gold? I’m not so sure that it will be that easy to find a man like that. You may ask why I would say such a thing but the reality of the situation is that majority of the representations young people see on television about their own race are the ideals they eventually grow up and strive towards. If 85% of their time is spent watching television, its only natural that those images will soon become embedded in them and their actions will be indicative of all the negative lifestyles they see on television.
Lets take the show Living Single for example. This show followed the lives of six twenty-something Blacks, four women and two men who lived in a brownstone in the heart of Brooklyn. The series followed them in their misadventures in dating, through their professional journeys and through life in general. This show seems harmless but the character played by Kim Fields (Regine Hunter) was a gold-digging, money hungry woman who only dated men with money or status. She felt that this somehow validated her as a woman and gave her the hope that if she married one of these types of men that she could spend her days lounging leisurely and spending money on unneeded possessions. These same personality traits were given to the character Toni Childs on the CW’s series comedy Girlfriends. Despite the myriad of shows that depict African American women in a positive light, somehow these are the only figures that stick in the minds of young people. Somehow it has been sensationalized that being attractive and wanted by several men is more desirable than being smart, educated and classy. Even in music videos, women are portrayed as sex symbols and possessions whom the rappers/singers have little use for than to be hung from their arm to show the world that they too are capable of bedding a beautiful woman. The same character is represented on reality TV shows such as Flavor of Love where the women degrade themselves all in an effort to win the so-called chance at love with a rich, unattractive celebrity.
Just like the images young Black women see on television, they are now striving to be beautiful, un-educated whores, for lack of a better term. This type of woman combined with the young men that are being bred by the thuggish, criminal portrayals of Black men they see on television sounds to me, like a recipe for disaster. As a young Black girl, Clair Huxtable gave me hope that I could reach my goals and be successful. I looked at her and saw my mother, who held a lot of the same qualities as Clair and I governed myself according to those ideals. In order for young Black women to understand that their happily ever after can exist, they first need to understand that unless they are striving to be more than what they see on TV then happy endings will not happen. They must know that when someone asks them what their goals are in life, they must reply with more than, “I would love to be in a music video.” Since all the representations of Black people in America are inaccurate, it is up to other successful, educated and knowledgeable Black people to let young people know that its is cool to be educated and classy – just like Clif and Clair Huxtable and very much unlike the women seen on Flavor of Love and I Love New York (another popular reality TV show).
It is very much possible to find a modern day Cliff Huxtable and have a happily ever after story similar to theirs (hey, I did). But, Clair did not marry Cliff because he was a doctor and had a lot of money. She knew him and loved him before all the money and the wealth came and stood by him in ways that money cannot buy. In the meantime, while he was becoming a doctor, she was not waiting around to live off of him, but had goals of her own – to be a successful lawyer. And that she was. Can little Black girls and boys find thier happily ever after? Absolutely! But it sounds to me like we need to begin to erase the representations our young people are seeing on television and replace them with positive ones before they become engraved in them so deeply that there is no turning back. If this indeed becomes a reality… you can blame the state of Black television for the destruction of our young people.
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