#MoneyEdition

What Black Sitcoms Tell Us about Class and Money

Money is a fiction that makes the world go around. For thousands of years, humans have assigned value to objects as a mode of transaction, a method of exchange for goods and services. The value of currency, though symbolic, has always relied on the confidence of its users. But, as we know, the fictions behind its functions have always held power.

Any history of currency and capital that does not account for their relations to exploitation, alienation, wage labor, and slavery, can’t tell the full story. From the outset, it was the fictions that did us in: who was deemed human, and the constellation of complicated rhetorics that followed, historically, determined access to money, capital, land and class mobility. Black scholars have long used this fact as a point of departure to excavate the systems of domination that oppress us, and find methods to get free. Black capitalism, Afrocentricity, Black feminism, Separatism, Rastifarianism, Postracialism, radicalism, Black nationalism and so much more, have been sharp critiques on the uneven distribution of collectively produced global resources, to tell us what we’ve always known: having money isn’t everything, not having it is. These movements and intellectual developments haven’t been without conflict, and Black culture and media has always been there to reflect and meditate on it all.

Today, some of the most intriguing conversations on class politics, and our relationships to money, in Black communities are happening on the screen. Sitcoms, particularly, have held an interesting position in relaying the political and economic interests of Black communities, whether working poor, middle class, or wealthy. Shows like Insecure, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Girlfriends, The Jeffersons, Atlanta, and even the Real Housewives reflect the views of their time, offering nuanced takes on the fluctuations of Black mobility, using humor to negotiate tensions of class, authenticity and respectability.

In this edition of the Ujima WIRE, we’ll explore the ways that our culture’s ideas of money, class and capitalism are expressed through some of our favorite shows.

The early 2000’s cult American sitcom, Girlfriends, followed an upwardly mobile crew of Black friends navigating career, love and friendship in Los Angeles, CA. Produced by Mara Brock Akil, the show was designed to follow the trend of shows focused on women in friend groups. "What was unique about Girlfriends that was different than Sex and the City, was Sex and the City was all about their dating relationships with a girl group to discuss it with. I wanted to shift it to the chosen family of sisterhood and use Joan and Toni as my Carrie and Mr. Big," Brock Akil told Harper's Bazaar.

The friends, Joan, Maya, Lynn and Toni, gave voice to the myriad ways that Black women show up in the world. Maya was a working-class, divorced single mother turned writer, who worked as a legal assistant to central characters Joan and William. Lynn was a free-spirited hippie, with five degrees, no money and a lot of student loans. Toni was a successful real estate agent, and "gold-digger," who always joked about never going back to the farm she grew up on. Joan, the show’s main character, was a terminally single, nerdy lawyer turned restaurateur. “Through their eyes, Akil was holding up a mirror to Black women,” wrote Brionna Jimerson for Glamour.

Avid viewers often remark that the real love story was between Joan and Toni, who were childhood bestfriends. While they are both from Fresno, CA, Joan comes from generational wealth, and Toni was brought up working class on a small farm. Through the hilarious bits across the season, we see the ways that this has affected the characters.

Early on, Toni and Maya often come into conflict due to Maya’s working-class background. In the episode Girlfrenzy, Toni accuses Maya of never having been to France, despite speaking the language with a great accent, and pokes at Maya’s use of African American vernacular language, saying, “The closest you’ve ever been to France is french toast at Denny’s. Ghetto fabulous is such a liar, there’s no way you’ve been to Paris when I’ve never been to Paris!” In an effort to keep the two from fighting, Joan tells the two that they need to support each other as Black women, then quips, “This is why there will never be an all-Black Real World!”

Joan, on the other hand, is less direct with her class anxiety. In another episode, Never a Bridesmaid, Joan wants to help plan a vow renewal ceremony for Maya and her husband Darnell, but fails miserably as she rejects every wish Maya has for her day. In the end, Joan is taken to task for looking down on Maya, but is allowed to remain a bridesmaid when the two make up.

The conflicts point to an underlying issue that is more than the differences in their salaries. Maya doesn’t perform the kind of Blackness that Toni wants to be in relationship with, and Joan sets out to fix the "issues" she thinks her friends have. These conflicts occur frequently, though Toni and Joan choose to hang out with their poorer friends. Joan’s running critique by friends is being “classist and egregious,” a joke that’s often brought up across the series. Maya and Lynn, to their credit, reject assumptions that having less means they are less worthy.

In the mid-90’s sitcom Moesha, similar issues arise within the primary friend group, when the titled character, played by Brandy, hounds her best friend and neighbor Hakeem for money he’s borrowed. In the first season of the show, Hakeem, a teenaged Black boy being raised by a single mother working two jobs, serves as a foil to Moesha, who, like Joan, is sometimes more focused on being right than being a good friend.

Hakeem is often the butt of the joke, as he struggles with food insecurity and visits the family at mealtime to eat and enjoy their company. His own mother is out working most of the time, while Moesha’s father and stepmother enjoy comfortable middle-class jobs that allow them to be together for breakfast and dinner. The show’s focus on teenagers creates an interesting nuanced narrative for how children are affected by money, or the lack of it.

During a phone interview with me, cultural critic and Harvard PhD candidate in African-American Studies, Jovanna Jones, pointed to the complicated relationship between Hakeem and the Mitchell family. Though most of the characters are beautiful, dark skinned Black Americans, the stereotypical negativity associated with being dark skinned are grafted onto Hakeem, and some of Moesha’s other friends. This comes into play in particular in the relationship between Frank, the father, Hakeem and Moesha. When it is later revealed that Hakeem’s electricity is shut off due to his mother’s recent lay-off, Moesha doesn’t immediately understand that they are unable to pay the bill due to lack of funds. Though she apologizes for hounding him about the debt, she never stops making jokes about his supposed "freeloading," and she doesn’t implore her family to either. The family does, ultimately, rally around Hakeem to get a part-time job at the mall, highlighting the show’s complicated Black conservative values.

In an essay about nameplates and hip hop culture writers Marcel Rosa-Salas and Isabel Flowers note that, “[Black] style’s ostensible ‘tackiness’ [is] rooted in notions of taste and aesthetics that are shaped by hierarchical race, class and gender politics.” Class is determined by capital, which maps major hierarchical divisions, and habitus, a framework of these divisions which includes taste and social capital. These ideas are all bound together by access, exposure and knowledge.

Our beliefs about good taste (what looks, tastes and feels good) are all wrapped up in class anxiety. By cultivating these tastes and beliefs we perform and embody a desirable class identity. And these status markers aren’t just about what we think is good, but who we think is good. When applied to culture in the United States, we know that class and mobility are inextricably linked to racial hierarchy. Mainstream ideas of taste, necessarily, depreciates Black culture, as it relies on Eurocentric standards, and is a means of maintaining cultural dominance. Having been excluded from economic advancement, enfranchisement, education, and even humanity, the ability for a Black person to progress in Western society meant assimilating for survival.

At the same time, Black culture and style has always been appropriated, and mined for its value, often without adequate ownership or profits. Every influential Black period has been packed with conversations about the social and material history of Black culture and taste. In the 1980s-90s and again in the 2010s, we watched as Black cultural symbols were rebranded, or re-territorialized, into mainstream culture with the emergence of new media platforms, like cable television, music videos, and social media.

In the years after the Black Power Movement, Black folks in the U.S. concretized and solidified their presence in the cultural space. Afros, fist-picks, nameplates, sneakers, and other customized fashions, both marked the self as an individual, but also as part of a larger vernacular culture.

As more Black writers and executives entered into the Hollywood mainstream, they wanted to tell new stories, integrating Black culture through an interior, more familiar cultural viewpoint. While Black sitcoms explore subjects that are relevant to everyone, like love, family, and friendship, beneath the surface sits these complicated conversations regarding class and money which undergird character behavior and development.

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air tackled intra-racial class issues more directly. The show presented a fish out of water scenario where the protagonist, Will, was suddenly hoisted into a new class identity, poked fun at class differences, and tussled with internalized racism in his extended family.

After moving to Los Angeles to live with his maternal Aunt’s family, his disposition is made fun of, often being called "ghetto", compared to his wealthier cousins and uncle. Though his youngest cousin and Aunt, Ashley and Vivian, respectively, are open to his perspective and accept the differences between them, cousins Carlton, Hilary and his uncle Phil are less welcoming. The family’s Black British butler, Geoffrey (arguably the funniest character on the show), quietly trades barbs with everyone, though choosing moments to come to their rescue or give sage advice.

In the episode, Not My Pig, You Don’t! Uncle Phil is confronted with his past as a poor farmer, when his parents arrive to celebrate an award he is given in recognition for his contributions to the “urban” community. When Will jokes that Phil is only “on the streets” when waiting for his chauffeur, Phil defends himself by listing the protests he participated in during the 1960’s. Phil wants to present himself as a successful lawyer and respectable Black person. He fought the good fight, made his way to Princeton, then Harvard Law School, and even volunteered at the NAACP. However, this veneer quickly falls apart when Uncle Phil’s parents arrive to show their support. Phil is embarrassed when his parents share stories about growing up in North Carolina, but the matter boils over when a white reporter comes to interview the family. When the reporter wants to kill the story because his life seems too dull, Will tries to help by telling the reporter stories of his Uncle’s youth on the farm, which embarrasses him.

The double consciousness present in The Fresh Prince, presumes that the representation of the poorer characters, like Will, would be perceived by whites as indicative of all Black people. More contemporary sitcoms often portray an awareness of the matter, while sitcoms of earlier generations regularly missed the opportunity to reject respectability politics. This, as writer Racquel Gates notes in her book Double Negative, “relies on the assumption that those that perform blackness in a negative manner bear the responsibility when their positively performing counterparts have their rights and privileges taken away.” Though the “ghetto” or “country” characters might not be accused of negative representation, they represent a problem to be fixed.

In the second act of the show, Phil’s mother, Hattie, shines light on his contradictions and lectures him about being ashamed of where he comes from, saying, “We always put food on the table, and clothes on your back.” After realizing how lucky he was to have parents who loved him, and strived to make sure he had more than they did, he celebrated them during his award speech. The episode closes with a black and white image of a Black boy, while Hattie sings Wade in the Water.

“Black people haven’t had a chance to just be, I guess, just regular people,” said Issa Rae to an interviewer, explaining her decision to create her titular character, Issa Dee.

Insecure follows another dynamic femme foursome, with particular focus on the relationship dynamics in women’s friendships, much like Girlfriends. When we first meet protagonist Issa Dee, she is a struggling non-profit youth worker, known for her social awkwardness and angst. Her best friend, Molly Carter, is a successful lawyer who is desperate to get married. Their two auxiliary buddies, fellow Stanford grads, Kelli, an accountant who is always the light of the party, and Tiffany, the rich A.K.A. who struggles with depression, make up the core group of the show. Her boyfriend, (Martin) Lawrence Walker, is an out of work techie who had spent the last two years, and all of his unemployment money, developing a start-up, Woot Woot. Issa’s world isn’t characterized by dramatic moments of racism, but rather microaggressions and moments of obliviousness.

For the creator, Rae, the primary driving force for the characters is their desire for growth. For the protagonist this means finding a career path she enjoys, and earning more money like her friends. Though she rarely complains about having too little, we watch the ways she struggles throughout the show. Insecure, along with its contemporaries, “Atlanta” and “black-ish,” explore an often ignored economic issue in our communities, Black downward mobility.

Earlier episodes find Issa’s character couch surfing after being priced out of her apartment, and driving for Lyft to make ends meet, though she has a degree from Stanford. In season four, even as Issa is on her proverbial come up, she visits a high-end store with Molly to return clothes she’s already worn for new items, in preparation for an important meeting.

For Black and Indigenous Americans, growing up in a middle class, or even wealthy family, does not necessarily guarantee the same mobility and access for younger generations. A 2017 report by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the two groups were least likely to enjoy the economic benefits of growing up in a middle class family. As the number of American households earning middle-class salaries grows smaller, the possibility of outearning your parents seems exacerbated for Black millenials and the generations that follow. This is the violence and vulnerability indicative of the ways our communities have been marginalization. Shows like Insecure highlight the limits and possibilities of proximity, and access, that a college degree, a good job, or even having a healthy upbringing can have on one’s life.

Elsewhere another cult classic, Living Single, creates a nuanced conversation about class ascension. In Living Single we meet Khadijah and her tightly knit group of friends living in the same brownstone in Brooklyn. Her chosen family, Regine, Maxine, Kyle, Overton, and maternal cousin Synclaire, come together to create the blueprint that would be the basis for other shows for years to come. While Khadijah, played by Queen Latifah, struggles to maintain her magazine, Synclaire moves to New York to be her assistant. Overton, Synclaire’s beau, works as the building’s handyman. Maxine and Kyle climb the corporate ladder as a lawyer and stockbroker, respectively. And Regine moves from retail sales associate to stylist on a soap opera.

In a hilarious two-part episode, Talk Showdown and The Shake Up, bourgeois Regine moves out after embarrassing her friends, and herself, on daytime television. After Synclaire writes into a daytime talk show about roommates from heaven, Regine attempts to control every aspect of the experience, from wardrobe to personality, because she is seduced by the chance to be on TV. “Regine is made out to be tacky because she is fronting, in the same way that she thinks her mom is tacky for being herself,” says Jovanna Jones, “[She] is actually the character that doesn’t have any integrity around class and that is because she’s so obvious with her striving.”

Moreover, Jones observes that the show is also ahead of its time by becoming a backdrop to an interesting conversation about gender and sexuality. Maxine and Kyle, two intelligent, materially successful dark skinned characters, are taunted for their lack of fidelity to gender roles, but are still seen as desirable. The “gender panic” for these two is played out through honest conversations which shows the viewer that it's okay to be yourself. Though they always tease each other for not performing their gender “properly,” it’s actually their struggle-love version of flirtation. The two maintain a will-they-won't-they love affair throughout the series, ultimately coming together in the final episodes.

black-ish is a series which follows the Johnson family — led by protagonist Andre Johnson (Anthony Anderson), a marketing executive, and wife Rainbow or Bo (Tracee Ellis Ross), a doctor — that might pass as an updated version of The Cosby’s. Solidly upper-middle class, their five children attend elite private schools, and they care for Dre’s aging parents, who live with them. Dre’s primary concern on the show deals with the access and privilege he’s provided for his children, who he fears may take it all for granted, or worse— become too assimilated.

In the 2022 season premier, Michelle Obama guest stars, as Dre and Bo have somehow managed to schmooze their way into a relationship with the First Lady. The episode opens with Dre’s need to monetize every aspect of life, including his free time. When his eldest son and mother offer him companionship, he declines, citing that it will cost him $500 to spend 30 minutes, “tast[ing] nasty cheese from a funky goat.” When Rainbow asks him to accompany her to a charity fundraiser that benefits voter enfranchisement, he begrudgingly obliges, “unfortunately, I’ve married someone whose time is also valuable.”

Initially, Dre doesn’t want to make couple friends at the fundraiser, but when faced with the opportunity to build a relationship with the Obamas, he drops everything, even refusing to have his kids and parents join a dinner party hosted at their home. When Mrs. Obama leaves, Dre and Bo gush, “I can get this life! I can get used to this life!” The parental figures of the show are always performing a tenuous balancing act, trying to be the right kind of Black person, an upstanding citizen, an example for their children, and maintaining their public personas at work. Surprisingly, they feel that they can relate to the Obamas more than others in their life because they are walking along the same tightrope.

In another episode (Jack of all Trades), very reminiscent of a famous Cosby storyline, their son Jack decides that he wants to become a trades worker after a career day visit from the union. Despite Jack’s obvious excitement about, and talent for, the manual trades, his parents become obsessed with redirecting his career trajectory, worried that he will be pigeonholed, like Dre’s father, Pops, in a blue-collar job for the rest of his life. Much like Insecure, their fear is legitimate, as middle-class status is so precarious for Black people.

Black-ish, with it’s direct conversation to the viewer and penchant for explaining every cultural nuance, from police brutality to the length of church services, is meant to educate it’s viewers on Blackness. “We leave it up to the public to enjoy it or debate,” Anderson said in an interview with the LA Times. “But there’s no trepidation at all because we come from an authentic place and that’s why we can dance the dance that we do in terms of the subject matters that we deal with. When you come at it from a real place and you’re authentic to who you are, who these characters are and what the dynamic of this family is, you can do just about anything and have it resonate with someone. And that’s what we do.”

All in all, these stories are a reflection of their times. The characters make mistakes, they learn, they grow, and their attitudes change over time. “Comedy in the black community is almost always about struggle,” says Mary Pattillo, author of Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class. “And while exploring class differences is not new for black sitcoms, it is important that these themes are reproduced and restaged for each generation. The specifics might be different, but every generation returns to this theme because the precarity [...] has not disappeared.”

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