RACISM + CINEMA

The Black Wonder Years is Making White Folks Mad

Seeing a Black version of a White classic series has some folks flustered. Let's unpack this.

Photo Credit | Laura Kariuki, Elisha Williams, Saycon Sengbloh, and Dule Hill star as the Williams family via ABC

White folks are used to seeing themselves on TV. Let's face it. Back in 1988, when the original Wonder Years series aired, mainstream American television focused on telling the same coming-of-age story. Boy meets girl — scratch that — White boy meets girl was the premise of dozens of series. Need receipts? We have shows like Leave it to Beaver, The Brady Bunch, Boy Meets World, and Dennis the Menace, to name a few.

Now, ABC's reimagining of The Wonder Years as a Black coming-of-age story, set in 1968, highlights a pivotal moment in American history. Finally, America can learn what it was like to grow up as a Black boy only a few years after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed into law. During this time, Black people experienced "White backlash."

Langston Hughes wrote a poem that met the moment, “The Backlash Blues,” which Nina Simone later set to music and recorded.

You give me second class houses
And second class schools
Do you think that all colored people
Are just second class fools?

— Nina Simone singing “The Backlash Blues”