I don’t always like the decisions and actions of many of them (Scandal, Being Mary Jane, How to Get Away With Murder), but I relish the complexity of each of those leading actors—a powerhouse political fixer, a television anchor who challenges mainstream narratives, and a kick-ass attorney/law professor who pulls out wins for her clients and looks out for her students. All single, all brilliant, all attractive—and all brown-skinned, often with natural hairdos to boot.
"Each of these programs depicts the struggle of Blackness, but they show the why and how."
The current lineup of Black shows on network, cable, and internet television has given me plenty to choose from. I’m grateful now for shows like Cosby, A Different World, Living Single, Girlfriends, and other ’90s sitcoms like them that paved a way for the shows I watch today: Queen Sugar, Seven Seconds, The Quad (although it’s been canceled), 13, Greenleaf, Atlanta, Insecure, even Black Lightning and Luke Cage, Empire and Power.
These shows offer a true representation of Black people as complex, competent, desirable, witty, accomplished, eccentric, quirky, funny, angry—human. They are families and friends who look out for each other.