Tuned In to TV’s Racial Divide

There’s an anecdote many African Americans readily share, one so ubiquitous and familiar it has urban-legend legs.

Invariably the scenario goes something like this: Depending on the household, the father, the grandfather or the great-aunt stumbles up from his or her TV chair and shouts--rousing the house--”Hey! There’s a Negro on TV!”

Decade to decade, household to household, that color-bar-crossing “Negro” might be Ethel Waters or Eddie “Rochester” Anderson; Nat “King” Cole or Hazel Scott; Bill Cosby or Hari Rhodes; Diahann Carroll or Nichelle Nichols; Georg Sanford Brown or Brenda Sykes.

That “Negro,” whether he or she was loyal buddy or fetching window-dressing, was significant simply for being there.

What did the presence of these actors mean in the larger scheme of things? Well, for that, we just had to stay tuned.

So Donald Bogle has.

Bogle, a scholar, journalist and author of the seminal study on African American images in American film “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in Films”--originally published in 1973 and to be reprinted by Continuum Publishers this spring--has made a career reading between the lines of images we see daily.

He lights briefly on the mudcloth-draped couch in the back room at Eso Won Books minutes before he’s scheduled to step behind the podium for a talk on his latest effort--”Prime Time Blues: African Americans on Network Television” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). “The truth is,” he says, “if there was a TV on and the sound was down and we were talking, even today we would probably stop and turn up the volume to see who those black people were. That’s because it’s still not our medium.”

If anyone can make that statement, it’s Bogle, who, between finishing up “Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography” and his teaching jobs at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, was knee-deep in this book. He spent four years paging through old issues of the Hollywood trades as well as Jet and Ebony, watching old video and kinescopes as well as Nick at Nite and TV Land (“It’s the only place I could see ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ ” which features black actor Ivan Dixon). And that’s not factoring in the hours he was in front of the tube while growing up in a Philadelphia suburb. To make things slightly manageable, Bogle says he set very specific parameters--focusing only on the networks--including UPN and WB, “both of which built their power bases through African American programming.”

The result is nearly 500 pages, (more than 40 of them notes, bibliography and index). In its heft, “Prime Time Blues” could well be expected to suffer from academic overkill. Instead, it reads like an enthusiast’s chatty outpourings; Bogle writes in a relaxed, conversational style that is echoed in his personal demeanor--his scholarly specs, tweeds and wing-tips, jazzed up by a flame-red tie and soul-patch.

As a couple of dozen men and women, black and white, young and old, industry types and ardent fans, settle into folding chairs, Bogle decides to forgo his planned slide show and begins, instead, by trotting out his own family memories.

“Even as a kid, I found myself asking all sorts of questions aboutwhat I was seeing and enjoying,” he reads from the book’s introduction: “The friendly maid Beulah [on the show named for her] never appeared fazed by the fact that she was a servant in a household that clearly took her for granted. Even the progressive Scotty [Bill Cosby] on ‘I Spy’ chummed it up with his white buddy Kelly without the subject of race.

“Before I could consciously express it, I think I was aware, as was most of black America, of a fundamental racism or a misinterpretation of African American life that underplayed much of what appeared on the tube. Yet I kept watching television.”

For Bogle, like many black viewers, it wasn’t simply the lure of popular episodic TV. What held him was what he saw beneath the thin veneer of the caricature or ghosts he glimpsed drifting across the screen: “What remained consistent throughout television history was that a group of dynamic or complicated or intriguing personalities managed to send personal messages to the viewers.”

Those messages made enduring connections. For one generation it might have been Amanda Randolph’s turn as the forthright maid Louise on “Make Room for Daddy,” for another it was Redd Foxx’s slovenly but acid-witted Fred Sanford on “Sanford and Son.” Watching them became an exercise to attempt to draw out backstories, even from the slimmest of distinguishing details. Bogle admits he spent an inordinate amount of time imagining inner thoughts for these incidental characters. “With stars like Louise Beavers or Ethel Waters [both playing the character Beulah], you really felt this sense of waste,” he laments.

Over the decades, to be sure, the television industry tossed teasers to black viewers--personalities that shimmered with assuredness and believability. But even though high-profile entertainers who had already established solid followings occasionally were given the reins, they didn’t have the run of the grounds.

A case in point was the saga of Nat “King” Cole. Urbane and sophisticated, Cole’s voice was already a familiar fixure in the homes of many; it was the mid-century Americana of cocktail music and lushly orchestrated Christmas carols. In 1956, his variety showcase, “The Nat ‘King’ Cole Show,” premiered on NBC, but after 64 weeks and several time slot changes, the show was canceled. The network blamed its demise on the “Southern market.” Cole, however, was quick to offer his appraisal in a candid interview in Ebony. The network hadn’t actively pursued Madison Avenue for a sponsor--leaving him adrift.

Cole was not the first. Juilliard-trained and hot on the supper-club circuit, Hazel Scott’s brief television tenure in 1950 offers up an even more poignant scenario. A child prodigy, Scott was brilliant, politically active, opinionated and telegenic. On her 15-minute prime-time show on the DuMont Network--which operated from 1946 to 1956--Scott wore shimmering ball gowns, sat at the piano and performed a wide array of fare--swing versions of Brahms, torch songs and spirituals. Then she was listed in Red Channels, the House Un-American Activities Committee’s list of entertainers believed to be communists or communist sympathizers. Scott decided to fight the accusations and asked for a hearing before the committee to refute the charges. But the mere suggestion caused irreparable damage. The program didn’t survive the blow.

“The Hazel Scott Show” lasted three months as a national network program. “Imagine what the future could have been for black people--black women, in particular--if she had remained on the air.” Bogle says. “After that, you know, we went back to black maids and Beulah. . . .”

Despite the many false starts, the parade of caricatures, all of these images remain terribly important. Not just to African Americans tuning in, but to all America, as the country collectively began to try to work out just how race and difference played in the day-to-day realm of their lives.

So what was going on between Liz McIntyre (Denise Nicholas) and Pete Dixon (Lloyd Cole) in the integrated Walt Whitman High School on “Room 222” or, for that matter, between white detective Joe Mannix (Mike Connors) and his black secretary, Peggy Fair (Gail Fisher), on the 1967-75 detective series “Mannix”? People wanted to know, because they felt they knew them and were navigating similar territory in their own lives.

That curiosity hasn’t waned. The questions thrown out during Bogle’s lively chat, from those assembled in a loose horseshoe fashion, suggest viewers are still hungry for discussion. They desire a much more active role in shaping what they see. “What about those trash talk shows?’ Like ‘Jerry Springer’? What kind of image is that sending out?”; “Who do you write to if you see something you don’t like?”; “Why do they bring these black characters on or bring black issues up and then it’s almost like they are afraid of dealing with them?”

One only has to reach back a few decades for a piece of the answer. In 1968, a study by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders found that the root of the country’s social discord had much to do with the “two Americas--one black the other white” that stood apart from one another. One of the suggested prescriptions was that the media should take a more “responsible role” in making, specifically, the “Negro more visible and part of American life.”

Though decades passed and protests raged, the world of television remains largely segregated, even if it may look changed on the surface. “Sure, there are more networks devoted to capitalizing on a black audience,” says Bogle. “No question that TV can be quick to respond. You were hearing Puff Daddy references on the WB long before his current trial,” or Jennifer Lopez for that matter. But despite the efforts, black and white audiences still tune in to very different worlds--because they are still looking for resonance.

Workplace dramas--such as “ER” and “Judging Amy”--which reflect where our lives often intersect--are a positive step, says Bogle. And an increase in cross-racial viewership is beginning to reflect just that. However, he stresses, reflecting black life takes more than just dropping more black characters into the mix. “People point to Dr. Peter Benton [Eriq La Salle] on ‘ER’ as an example of a strong, black male character. But what do we know about his life? He’s angry, but we don’t quite know what about. We suspect it’s race. But is it? We’ve never seen him go out with a few of his African American friends. What’s it like to live two lives? How does race really affect his life? Because it does. We know it does. We don’t want to see it every time. But we do want it sometime. Because that’s life.”