Day 4

 At some point in my young life, I don't quite recall the exact age, I decided that Hollywood was no place for Black people. I saw so few of us on TV, and none that really looked like me, that it just seemed like this was so. It was no place for us. Therefore, I would stop looking for us to be there. I would stop looking for someone who looked like me. Hollywood had apparently not been able to find any, because they never showed any, so there were none. No one else looked like me, I was the only little black girl that looked exactly like me. So, Hollywood was no place for me either. No place for Black people and no place for me.

Since Hollywood cared so little for Black folks, and showed so few of us, that I decided I would reciprocate the feeling. I would from then on care very little for Hollywood. I was no longer going to look for me there. They were not ever going to show me me as I was. So I was going to shape myself outside of its influence.

As silly as that sounds, that's how I felt. And I felt this way all while watching shows with young black girls in them. I came up in the time when a young Kim Fields played Tootie on Facts of Life. I remember a young Janet Jackson as Penny on Good Times. I remember Raj and Dede on What's Happening. Arnold and Willis in Diff'rent Strokes.

So, we were there. They showed Black folks. But still that just wasn't enough for my greedy little heart, I guess. I wanted to see someone who looked more like me and I guess I never did.

Another thing I also noticed. They'd either play what I now call "slave tales" or we were firmly stuck in the 1950s, but rarely did I see Black folks in a suburban city such as the one I grew up in, just living life as my parents, brothers and I did.

I understand now why they never showed those images. Too many Whites didn't want to see Blacks doing well. Not even those Hollywood Whites who employed those Hollywood Blacks. But at the time it as another frustration.

So I watched the shows they gave us, but always wished for more. While at the same time deliberately not identifying that closely with anyone I saw on it. I was me, an original so original that Hollywood couldn't even find another me that looked like me. I wasn't going to let Hollywood tell me who to be.

Then the Cosby Show came on. It was 1984, the year I turned 12. Finally, I saw a well-to-do Black family that, although it still wasn't mine, felt more like mine than any of the other Black families they'd previously showed.

By then I'd been taught that I lived in a dual culture where I could be freely myself, all Black at home or at church, but I had to be more conservative in the world beyond those places. My mom was a nurse, my dad worked in the post office, two solid middle-class jobs. And even though we still had to put stuff on layaway and save and go without, we were able to do things together as a family like go on vacations or, of course, to make the yearly trip back South where my parents were from.

So, we were okay. I don't recall ever going without food, even if I never got all the toys I wanted for Christmas. We were okay. Life was okay for us as far as I could see.

 But no one ever showed until The Cosby Show. Then I think people had to adjust to the fact that Blacks could be like them, live an okay life, have clean, comfortable homes and not struggle all the time over everything.

I didn't see myself, or my family, not really. But I was very, very relieved to finally see us as I already saw us. The people at my church, they were doctors and nurses and administrators and worked in office jobs. They lived in integrated neighborhoods same as me. In fact, a few had been the first to integrate their neighborhoods, to be allowed to buy homes across the tracks as they used to say. 

Everyone thinks of my city as bad and as a slum of some sort. But really it's just a victim of the neglect that white governments imposed on it. Even now. But, as with everything the government neglects, they've made it clear they want their property back and want to bestow it upon others who they can't be accused of neglecting. Because it's a good city in a prime location, near water and bridges and highways in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I already saw us as The Cosby Show depicted us. I was already living that version of life, as were many of the members of my church. Finally, the show's images let me and the world know that we were not alone.

Hollywood isn't for Blacks. Hollywood isn't for me. And for many years Hollywood had me convinced I was the only little Black girl that ever looked like me. But, once upon a time, Hollywood did show me an image of Blacks that felt like me because I was living a version of that already.

Since that was all they were going to give me, while it would never truly be enough, for that moment I was satisfied.