White Guilt

I made a cool & unusual discovery the other day: the channel that broadcasts a lot of sports & specifically the Yankees’ games, called the YES (Yankees Entertainment and Sports) Network, also shows old episodes of the show White Shadow at 1am NY time. You folks who are as old or older than me remember it, don’t you? I loved it when I was a kid, but I was kind of surprised to hear it first ran when I was age nine until I was 12. Did I see it in reruns, or did I just not understand a bunch of the jokes?

It’s dated in certain ways – tight, short shorts on basketball players – but it’s a lot better than a lot of crap that’s on now. Little did I know, but it was the first ensemble drama on TV that had a predominantly African-American cast. Only one other show (Showtime’s Soul Food) with a predominantly African-American cast aired for longer, but the current show The Wire is only now about to beat them both.

& That’s pretty damned shocking, imho: only three dramas with African-American casts that had more than a couple of seasons since 1978? That’s just messed up.