American Families in TV - 1970's blog entry

With civil rights movements, Affirmative Action, and groups such as the Black Panthers, and the ACLU popping up around the country, it’s only logical that the ideas of social change from the 1960’s would expand onto television in the 1970’s. Many of these "radical" ideas gained wider acceptance in the new decade, and were quickly mainstreamed into American life, culture and media. Even with all the movements and protests, the views of African-American’s were still greatly varied across 1970’s television shows.


In the several television shows I watched, race, diversity and difference played out in a very obvious way… but ways that were new to the times they premiered. On “All in the Family”, Archie Bunker brought out the prejudices and ignorance that had prevailed among older generations for a long period of time. From his excitement regarding Lionel’s education: “I’s gonna be a ‘lectrial engineer” to his detest at the idea of being mistaken for a “Jew”, Archie Bunker brought to the surface the feelings and thoughts of many American’s who were set in their mind of how people should be regarded. Many American’s claimed to be pro-civil rights, but were not so easy to change their way of thinking and their way of viewing their fellow American’s. Comments such as “I like colored people, but I don’t want them living next door” showed the feelings that many older American’s had. Through comments like this, they truly believed that they were not prejudiced, and that others were condemning them unjustly.


For the first time on mainstream television, we were also introduced to the inner circles of African-American homes on “Good Times”. We get a chance to see their fears, their concerns and the things that are important to a group of people that we may not have had any exposure to previously. On “Good Times” we see a very different view of the world than we saw on “All in the Family”. Throughout the pilot of Good Times, we are regularly told of their views of the “white man”, and how the “black man” needed to have more pride in their race. Through the younger son, Michael, we see the epitome of the “black pride” movement and how young African-American’s were being raised to think about their race.


In the late 1970’s, “Diff’rent Strokes” was the first television show to combine these two different cultures: upper-class European and lower-class African –American. In the first episode we are introduced to Phillip Drummond, an incredibly wealthy Caucasian man who promised his late African-American maid that he would look after her two young boys. Willis and Arnold move into the Drummond penthouse from their home in Harlem and find themselves feeling out of place as the “two black kids” in the very white Drummond home. In Diff’rent Strokes we see the combining of two cultures that, on the surface, appear very different. Throughout the whole episode, the concept of race appears many times, yet in very different ways than in both Good Times and All in the Family. In Diff’rent Strokes, Arnold brings his black goldfish, Abraham, to the penthouse, where Mr. Drummond tells him that he’s never seen a black goldfish. Arnold replies that it’s ok because Abraham “never saw a rich white man before either”. Where Archie Bunker makes racist remarks based on ignorance, Arnold makes comments out of innocence.

The innocence of Michael’s pride, and Arnold’s spunk show how the younger generations were ready for the racial rights movements that were exploding during the 1970’s. The ignorance shown by Archie Bunker demonstrated the views of the older generations who may not have been ready for the changes that were occurring in the country, and demonstrated that it may take a little longer for some people to accept the ideas and beliefs that the younger generations had so readily accepted.