Cosby Show Dreams and African American Financial Realities

But, if you dig deeper the piece does an impactful analysis of the show itself, and what the creators had to do to present the nuclear black family as successful to America in the early eighties. The show walked the fine line laid out by a country that wanted to be post-racial only twenty years after Jim Crow signs had hung at local restaurants. Creators balanced the expectations of a post civil rights America’s desire to become the visualization of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, and how that fit inside of African-American reality.

the piece continues

As we look back at the show and its influence, we begin to perform a critique that is long overdue. I will say undoubtedly it is my belief that the show’s legacy is one that reaches all the way to the White House. I agree with Oprah’s statements, “we probably wouldn’t have the president we have in the White House right now had there not been the Bill Cosby show. Because the Bill Cosby show introduced America to a way of seeing black people…” …

Yet, despite this positive impact on the exceptional black individuals’ acceptance into white America’s psyche, it may have done the opposite for America’s ability to relate to the average black family’s struggles that resulted from a legacy of Jim Crow and slavery. For a generation of white Americans that had little contact with black America in daily life, the apathy Thursday nights with the Huxtables created toward the experience of black struggle has been understated. The idea that if Cliff Huxtable did it you can too rang loudly in expectations of black progress.