Introduction

Black families have been portrayed on mainstream television throughout the late twentieth century, in programs such as The Cosby Show, Good Times, and Family Matters. Since then, Black families have been demonized and reduced to portrayals as poverty-stricken and welfare-dependent on various American media outlets. White families, on the other hand, have been portrayed as the embodiment of model citizens. In the past, Black families on television were for the entertainment of the white viewer but later became primarily for the Black viewer. Contemporary shows such as Black-ish, Grown-ish, and Mixed-ish have become extremely mainstream due to their ability to address racial relations, cultural shifts, and other interdisciplinary topics relevant in the Black community. The named examples are all shows created and produced by one Black man: Kenya Barris. With the traction of the Black Lives Matter, Barris seems to be a firm believer in shedding light on Black issues, such as how colorism plagues and is reinforced in our communities. Colorism is the concept that lighter-skinned Black individuals are given more opportunities and privilege than their darker-skinned counterparts. Typically, the media shies away from colorism, even when centering Blackness and Black life. Shows like Black-ish tackle conversations around colorism head on. My research question focuses on how colorism is discussed on Barris’s shows? It is essential to analyze the implications of colorism represented on television under one producer whose work is under a larger, more racially diverse, audience’s gaze than in the past.

Literature Review

Scholars have long studied the construction of Black families on television. David Stamps analyzes the construction of the African American family on television, over time by comparing the more recent show Black-ish to one of the best primetime Black family programs: The Cosby Show.¹ By comparing and contrasting them, he pinpoints how the narrative is drawn away from the struggling Black family to affluent ones living in suburbia. Though the Cosbys do not live in the suburbs, they do reside in a more affluent part of Brooklyn. This shows the significance of representation and invokes conversations about where Black families can live. Both of these shows take a comedic stance. However, Black-ish takes comedy and uses it to appeal to a large audience while navigating racial inequality, stereotyping and disparities as a Black family existing in America.²  While Stamps’s research is useful in examining popular understandings of Black families through class and fatherhood, it is also necessary to analyze how colorism is discussed in these same shows—which I do in this paper. The recent evolution in the construction of the Black family represents how people are interacting with Blackness and identity differently today. This is manifested through the abilities and freedoms to discuss race relations and Blackness on television. The Cosby Show could have talked about race and nuances like colorism, but it made the decision not to, and that became one of the biggest critiques of the show. This is why it is so relevant to understand why Barris does choose to discuss race relations and how it is represented in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Other studies have examined Black families through depictions of Black fathers according to their class. Televised Black fathers like ‘Dre from Black-ish are often coming into new wealth, and their attitudes shift on parenting. Social class is a major factor in parental ideologies and child-rearing practices.³ According to the study “From Good Times to Blackish: Media Portrayals of African American Fathers,” mothers of all classes are expected to invest in the emotional and psychological wellbeing of their children. However, it is evident in shows like Good Times, The Cosby Show and Black-ish that fathers were waning away from physical punishment and encouraging more negotiation. For fathers like ‘Dre who grew up in an environment where toxic masculinity was informed by colorism, social class allowed for these fathers to interact with their sons with new modern values. Conformity and strict rules were becoming synonymous with lower and working class.

On television, there is a common representation of the Black family: a dark-skin husband and a light-skin wife, held up in Black-ish. This trope of colorism represented in Black love and romantic relationships is evident within Black youth even in the college scene. For Black men and women, this is their first opportunity to be free with their dating choices. Black women, specifically dark-skin Black women, feel significantly disadvantaged when they are not as sought after as their counterparts. It is harder for them to find a partner due to their dark hues.⁴ If there are open conversations on television and in the home about skin color and the beauty of diversity, it will strengthen the Black individual’s self-esteem.⁵ Master’s theses by Danaysha Cosbert and Alisha Erves argue that colorism impacts the representation of women of color across television. Erves specifically discusses the beauty standard that arises when this is the representation of women of color. This beauty standard will promote lighter-skin women at the forefront of all opportunities whether it be social, political, or romantic. Her findings concluded that negative stereotypes are still being applied to women of darker skin today solely on skin color. Her analysis and discussion depict the repercussions this has on darker skinned women of color’s ideas on the limitations of social mobility. In Maxine Thompson and Verna Keith’s study, they support this analysis by stating that “skin tone has negative effects on both self-esteem and self-efficacy, but operates in different domains of the self for men and for women. Skin color is an important predictor of self-esteem for Black women, but not Black men. And color predicts self-efficacy for Black men but not Black women.”⁶This is evident in the colorism and its effects on romantic relationships due to the beauty standards in the Black community, while colorism also operates on the self-efficacy of Black boys and the expectations of what it means to be masculine.

The Black Lives Matter movement has sprouted many campaigns of self-love, importance of Black life and uplift of Black culture. Black people are educating themselves and others more than ever in formal education and through discourses to combat the divide in the Black community. These discourses are engaged in literature, but especially on television. The role of Black producers is essential to engaging with how colorism is depicted and interacted with on and off the camera. In a primary interview with producer Kenya Barris of the -ish series, Chrisitine Acham is able to give readers more insights on the choices Barris makes for the -ish series, such as plotlines, diversity, and colorism conversations, and why. Black producers are often highlighted harshly for their work. In the interview, Barris discusses choices to operate within the paradigm of respectability politics to protect the opportunity of future groundbreaking conversations. Acham’s questions should have prompted Barris to discuss the lack of diversity on and behind the camera. His failure to not properly address these issues are used to critique decisions made on the conversations and implications of colorism.⁷ Barris’s choice of television networks has gained a considerable following, and his creations have become mainstream. This newfound context has attracted new viewers of all backgrounds. His decisions will be praised and critiqued for how he reinforces colorism and how it operates in the Black community.

Methods and Data

The genre of family television is a cornerstone of how Black families end their evenings together. In the age of Black Lives Matter, where more individuals are receiving formal education and gaining more insight on topics that have divided the Black community, it was appropriate to choose Kenya Barris’s -ish series.

Barris produced Black-ish followed by its derivatives Grown-ish and Mixed-ish. Each of the series seeks to provide an unmanufactured representation of the many racial, cultural and generational nuances that Black families deal with. One of these nuances is how colorism impacts Black individuals. The first show produced under Kenya Barris is Black-ish which depicts a Black man, his biracial wife and their four children. The second show, Grown-ish, is a spin-off of Black-ish following their youngest daughter Zoey Johnson’s journey through university with her friends. The third show, Mixed-ish, is a spin-off of Black-ish focused on a past narration of the interracial mother’s childhood. For data, I conducted a content analysis on the conversations surrounding colorism on Black-ish’s season 5, episode 10 “Black Like Us,” Grown-ish’s season 1, episode 10, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” and Mixed-ish, Season 1, Episode 1, “Becoming Bow.”

Black-ish does an excellent job of taking an affluent suburban Black family and discussing different perspectives on race, class and other intersecting identities such as colorism. I will analyze season 5, episode 10, where the family gets into a heated argument about the colorist comments made toward each other. At a party shown in Grown-ish’s season 1, episode 10, Jazz and Sky carry the conversation on how colorism affects the dating pool and potential romantic relationships. Mixed-ish has taken initiative to have mainstream conversations representing people who are interracial or look racially ambiguous. Interestingly enough, this show has had only one season and has not taken the opportunity to have an episode dedicated to colorism. I will analyze season 1, episode 1 where Bow and her siblings are introduced to the concept of colorism due to their interracial identity.

I analyze and take each character’s skin color, gender, their understanding of identity and socio-economic status into consideration. In the interview with Acham, Barris explains how his shows are produced with a certain structure in mind: Intro, body, and resolution.⁸ I will be comparing and contrasting each of these show’s resolutions to provide a better understanding of how Kenya Barris engages with and depicts colorism on major television networks.

Findings

Black-ish

The following descriptions of each character will allow for a better understanding of each character’s perspectives of how they represent certain individuals in the Black community. ‘Dre is a Black, middle-aged father with brown skin, and he is a successful advertising executive despite a childhood struggling under a single-parent home in Compton. Bow is a biracial (Black and white), middle-aged, light-skinned mother in the field of anesthesiology. Diane and Jack are twins, where Diane struggles with being the darkest in the family, while Jack is considerably lighter than her. Junior is the eldest son, who identifies as a light-skin Black male. The grandmother, Ruby is ‘Dre’s mother who lives with them; she has brown skin, is retired, and she helps with caregiving.

The family’s home is based in a suburb in California, allowing the audience to note how class affects their identity. Identity is affected by classism, which affects their views on colorism and how loud or silent the conversations about it will be at home. For example, Junior, the oldest son is considered soft like Drake, the rapper, because they are both light skin Black men. This comment is consistently made by ‘Dre who is darker and falsely perpetuates how darker hues makes an individual more Black. His comments are informed by his problematic understanding of the traditional roles of darker-skinned Black men and perpetuates toxic masculinity. The grandmother addresses how this affects beauty standards by storytelling of her youth and how she found fewer love interests and job opportunities due to her darker skin color. Though beauty standards affect predominantly all women in the Black community, she discusses it from a classist standpoint. Men who become successful or more affluent in society tend to pick white, foreign, or lighter-skinned women. Junior and Bow show their ignorance and privilege of having lighter skin and say that darker people are represented through Lupita Nyong’o. When the grandmother asks who else, they fail to respond. Lupita Nyong’o is the token dark-skin Black woman with Eurocentric features. The beauty standard remains that light skin is the better representation of the Black race. After a huge fallout, the grandmother and ‘Dre apologize to Junior and Bow about their part in perpetuating stereotypes about interracial and lighter-skinned Black people. 

Grown-ish

Like the Black-ish episode, season 1, episode 10, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” seeks to educate about colorism and interracial relationships. The episode starts off with the protagonist of the show, Zoey, narrating statistics based on dating apps like Tinder on how “82 percent of non-Black men show some bias against Black women.” Jazz and Sky are twins that are close friends with Zoey. At a party, Jazz starts to give evidence to the group of how there is a “list” of preferential women, and Black women are at the bottom. White women are at the top, then Asian, then any exotic/foreign looking women such as mixed or Latina ladies, and finally Black women.

Jazz and Sky are the main characters facilitating the argument about why they are the least desired. A more in depth look at the main character’s description will inform the audience of their perspectives. Zoey is a lighter-skin Black young lady who grew up in the suburbs and has also been dependent on her parents. Jazz and Sky are the darkest of the friend group and are the only Black women actively participating in the conversation. They are brown-skin athletes on a scholarship. Vivek is a first-generation Gujarati Indian American with Hindu parents. He is a drug dealer in order to support his fashion lifestyle that is a product of his consumption of Black culture. Aaron is a brown-skin Black man who considers himself “woke.” Nomi is a bisexual Jewish American who identifies as white. Ana is a Catholic Cuban American who strongly identifies as Republican.

Doug is introduced later in the episode and is not a part of the friend group. He is a Black man who shows interest in every other race, except Black women. Luca is the self-assured Black man who is extremely calm, blunt and goes with the flow. Aaron, the darkest Black man in the group, claims that he loves all his Black queens until Luca calls him out for only loving queens when “they’re Egyptian and not Nubian.” He highlights a clear preference in Aaron’s dating pool for only talking to women of lighter complexion who have type-three curl patterns. Quickly, Aaron starts to run around the party and finds a dark-skin Cameroonian woman and brings her back to the group to flaunt that he is interested in darker women from “The Motherland.” The insulted woman realizes she is being used as a tool and leaves. Jazz educates the group about how common this is and is reflected in mainstream media through the romantic relationships that actors, athletes, and influencers partake in: all interracial.

She gives examples from pop culture, listing famous athletes like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, rappers like Big Sean, Tyga, Lil Wayne, and actors like Terrence Howard for showing a deep preference for lighter skin, “exotic,” or white women. This portrayal in the media perpetuates colorism in the dating pool and rejecting women who have no proximity to whiteness. A boy comes over, interested in Sky, but once he notices Ana decides to talk to her instead. Ana is annoyed and claims that she did not put herself on the list. Sky reminds her that her skin color along with her “hips, lips, and ass” did. They don’t want Black women, but want a woman who has typical features of a Black woman. Vivek agrees, and then claims there is nothing sexier than a strong, independent confident Black woman, like Teyana Taylor and Keke Palmer. After the latter comment, Sky and Jazz are disgusted with Vivek. Sky notices Doug talking to women of different races. She approaches him and directly asks why he isn’t showing interest in any Black women. He says because “I can.” The next day he finds her on campus and explains it was the norm he saw other Black men playing into on campus and it was easier.

Mixed-ish

The prequel spin-off of Black-ish, Mixed-ish discusses colorism and Black identity.Though the series is new and hasn’t tackled the conversations in specific episodes, I will use season 1, episode 1, “Becoming Bow.” Colorist themes are extremely evident and have been woven into dialogues between the lighter-skinned Bow, her two siblings, and the outside world. Bow and her younger siblings were born on a commune to a white father and a Black mother. Bow is a light-skin twelve year old coming to terms with her biracial identity and how America will view her. Santamonica is her sassy, light-skin five-year-old sister. Johan is the light-skin younger brother who takes interest in Black street culture and sports. Alicia is the dark-skin Black mother who is a lawyer. Paul is the white stay-at-home father. Alicia and Paul decide to move onto the commune due to the controversy around their interracial marriage. The children on their first day of school walk into the middle of a racially split lunchroom where a Black child asks them, “What are you weirdos mixed with?” Bow and her siblings were never taught that they were interracial or even what it meant to be mixed. That evening, at home, their father tells them it’s not important to think about these constructs and their mother argues that it is. The mother explained that after the Loving Act of 1967, more interracial marriages began and it meant that Bow and her siblings were the “beta testers of biraciality.” This prompted Bow to ask whether she had to pick Black or white because she wasn’t accepted in either. Her aunt Dee Dee claims she is Black since America already decided for her while the mother says they are both Black and white. Bow quickly learns that when she is around the White girls at school she is the Black sheep. Yet, when Bow is around the Black girls at school, even though she can relate in being able to dance, or not being able to find her name on a keychain, she looks different in skin color and hair type, and also has had different experiences.

Discussion

At the cornerstone of it all, Black families on television need to continue to show real conversations for the Black and non-Black viewer. Dissecting topics like colorism through an intersectional lens allows the viewers to recognize how racial issues and prejudices are not a one-dimensional issue. It is not possible to talk about the effects of colorism on Black men without discussing Black masculinity, Black fatherhood, and social class. Likewise, it is important to discuss how colorism affects Black women’s self-esteem and how it affects their chances at Black love due to unfair beauty standards. These conversations being held by televised Black families allow to discuss these biases against skin complexions and hold the entertainment industry, producers, celebrities and each other more accountable.

Kenya Barris holds a key position in representing Blackness in the Black Lives Matter age. His belief is that topics should have light shed on them, but in a certain way so that other cultures can understand them. Having shows specifically like Mixed-ish air for a whole season and not directly talk about issues like colorism and the privilege held by lighter skinned members of our community reflects on how the Black community is still handling these issues. It is sensible to be cautious of the freedoms made available by past Black producers, but if given an opportunity, I feel that the producers cannot just start the conversation, the resolution needs to be executed. For example, a powerful moment in Black-ish was ‘Dre as a Black father apologizing to his son for ridiculing him about his emotions and questioning his masculinity.

The resolution in Black-ish was effective in giving a positive representation of how, as Stamps, Hill, and Kelly discuss, class conventions in parenting can show a preference for negotiation and understanding over punishment for disagreement. Yet Kenya Barris failed in his resolution by only allowing both darker skin characters to apologize to his lighter skinned members. By Bow not acknowledging that she held privileges, Barris perpetuated the same privileges of colorism the whole episode sought to fight against. As light-skinned people, it is their job to make space for their darker-skinned counterparts who are silenced and lose opportunities due to colorism. In Grown-ish, the statistics and the facts Jazz and Sky state both give evidence to the arguments Cosbert makes about skin color affecting Black love. The twins gave real examples of celebrities that participate in this system that affects the self-esteem of darker-skinned women. Thompson’s and Keith’s discussion of self-esteem informs the conversation Sky chose to have with Doug. I believe that this scene was also poorly executed when Doug responds back because “I can.” Barris, himself a man with a lighter-skin wife, had the opportunity to address his preferences and acknowledge through Doug’s dialogue the effects it has on beauty standards and Black women’s self-esteem. The one scene where we actually see Aaron and a woman of dark skin, she is made into a flat character as if she cannot carry her own voice. This would have been the perfect opportunity to give the darker-skin women who this issue disproportionately affects, a chance to give a powerful response and the necessary representation she deserves. This inequitable casting is seen throughout the -ish series and persists in recent criticisms of Barris most recent show, Black-AF; it has been criticized for featuring only light-skinned people with loose curls and long hair.

There is a conversation to be had about the casting choices of the mother for the Mixed-ish spinoff. In the original show, Black-ish, when grown-up Bow’s mother comes to visit, she was a lighter, racially ambiguous woman. Suddenly, the audience is expected to believe that Bow’s Black mother aged and got lighter. This casting choice is extremely similar to how in Grown-ish, Aaron decides to pick a token dark skin woman to prove that he is not a colorist. Casting directors across all three shows have done a good job of finding a diverse cast, but have done poorly in including diverse Black women. Abruptly inserting a dark-skin mother shows the recognition that there are not enough dark-skin women across the shows. It is why whenever there is a conversation about colorism specifically from a darker woman’s point of view it is held by characters like Jazz, Sky, and Diane.

Conclusion

My analysis of three mainstream shows under one producer, Kenya Barris, contributes evidence to the discussion of colorism in the Black community. Kenya Barris’s works were most appropriate because they have flourished in the height of the Black Lives Matter Movement and ultimately have taken up the task of educating and setting expectations for Black families. Barris’s show does an excellent job of supporting the intersectionality of the literature review of the articles that highlight how colorism is nuanced. More case studies and literature can review the effects of how Barris allows respectability politics to essentially ruin his execution of an important topic. It would be interesting to compare his work to other prominent Black producers who defy respectability politics on camera and off camera with equitable casting of Black actors.

1. David Stamps, “The Social Construction of the African American Family on Broadcast Television: A Comparative Analysis of The Cosby Show and Blackish,” Howard Journal of Communications. 28 (2017): 1-16.
2. Stamps, “The Social Construction of the African American Family on Broadcast Television.”
3. Shirley Hill and Janice Kelly, “Chapter 9: From Good Times to Blackish: Media Portrayals of African American Fathers,” in Deconstructing Dads: Changing Images of Fathers in Popular Culture, edited Laura Tropp, Janice Kelly (Lexington Books, 2016).
4. Danaysha Cosbert, “African American College Students and Colorism: Examining the Influence of Media Consumption and Internalization on Perceived Skin Color, Self-Esteem, and Dating Preferences,” Master’s thesis, North Carolina Central University, 2019.
5. Alisha R. Erves, “The Impact of 21st Century Television Representation on Women of Color: Colorism Myth Or Reality,” Master’s thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 2019.
6. Maxine Thompson and Verna Keith, “The Blacker the Berry: Gender, Skin Tone, Self-Esteem, and Self-Efficacy,” Gender & Society 15, no. 3 (June 2001): 336-357.
7. Chtistine Acham, “Black-ish: Kenya Barris on Representing Blackness in the Age of Black Lives Matter,” Film Quarterly 71, no. 3 (March 2018): 48–57.
8. Acham, “Black-ish.”