It's A Different World...Than Where I Come From

Don't ask me what I was doing as a 7 year old watching a show about college kids with grown up problems. Bottom line: that was my show!

In the late 80's and very early 90's, the Cosby Show, A Different World, and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were really the only television shows that I knew of that depicted minorities in an educated and positive light. In addition to the wisdom of my grandmother, mom, and uncles, the shows helped my still small yet developing brain understand that success in life is only achievable by hard work, an education, and pride in one's self and accomplishments.

Not only did these shows show that minorities are and can be educated individuals, it also showed that we were...people! I say this because if you look at television shows prior to the 70's that featured African-Americans and other minorities, we were usually primarily portrayed as maids, criminals, or just always down on our luck.  There was no room for romance, weddings, college degrees, mansions...no room for success. Granted that the lives that the people lived on these shows weren't the lives that my mother and her brothers lived growing up in the exact same era as the stars of these shows, they still gave a sense of hope and a positive image.

Even though I started college some ten years after A Different World went off the air, I still carried the image of what I had seen on that show with me.  If I had to identify with a character, I'd have to say I was a cross between the revolutionary Freddie and the southern-belle Whitley (without the money). I yearned for the undying love of a man like Dwayne and to have the ambitious nature of Freddie (who very much like me changed her mind half way through college about what she desired to be). However, going to an women's, Catholic, liberal arts, university wouldn't necessarily give me all that ...but it was nice to think about anyway!

Anyway, to my point: it's a totally different world than where I came from in the 90's. There are no shows that showcase black universities, or showcase African-American students or young people in positive light. Instead we live in an era of reality piss (yeah I said piss because thats what it is). We live in a world of fast money, a denial of culture, and still a very low achievement gap in schools for minority students.

A lot of young people I come across, are simply passing through when it comes to education.  They know they have to graduate in order to be able to get some kind of job, but are not concerned about their futures as a whole.  They are not aware or do not want to be aware of their impact on the world. Many have given up hope. The sad thing is that many of these same young folks are the ones who has been desensitized by media images of nothingness. They have not been taught their history because it's no longer required or has been absorbed into the whole of American history. While OUR history is American history, it is a history that is filled with so much information, tragedies, triumphs, and glorious lessons that it cannot and SHOULD NOT be relegated to a few chapters in a book. 

That is why A Different World still means so much to me; it was a sitcom but also an educational piece. Where else could you see the drama of a freshman romance unfold while learning about Lena Horne, or the transatlantic slave trade? 

Not to get on my old lady soapbox but I really think that the youth of today could benefit from a show like this now. They are the ones that consume that majority of the media so why not? Maybe then, just maybe, we would see a change in the collective consciousness of the community as a whole. Maybe then we would see the new leaders because as cliche' as it is:They are the future.

It is a different world than where I and my friends come from. At 28, I am beginning to see that what I thought of as progress is nothing if you didn't get it by being a housewife or a rapper. It is sad but not hopeless. 

It just really is...different.