By the mid-1960’s, my parents had settled into a modest, ranch-style home in Dayton, Ohio. The neighborhood was a mix of predominately white, working-class transplants—my father among them—who found work in one of the many local factories.

I began kindergarten in the autumn of 1970. Miss Cooper was my assigned teacher and a twenty-something African-American. Most of my classmates were white. My perceptions then of a mostly-white world were nourished after supper as television broadcasts of “Gunsmoke,” “Here’s Lucy,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” and “Adam-12” offered whiteness beyond my middle-class Dayton neighborhood.

By 1973, the number of black classmates was increasing. My neighborhood also was changing. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes and their sons, Bernard and Frankie, moved into the house across the street from ours. I found the Hughes’ to be casual and warm. I was surprised when mother or father made friendly overtures in our neighbors’ presence. My parents weren’t very neighborly, privately anyway. It was the first time I had become consciously aware of the concept of “prejudice.”

By sixth grade, my white best friend, Brian, had moved with his family out of state. Desegregation was introduced in Dayton’s public school system. Familiar classmates from fifth grade, many of them black, were bused across town. I stayed behind. My new, transient peers—mostly white—adjusted to new school jitters. Fairport Elementary, based in the city’s section that was becoming less and less white, was now less and less black.

Did desegregation in Dayton accomplish what was intended? Were the lives of school-aged children—black and white—profoundly served in any meaningful way?

In the episode of “Everybody Hates Chris” viewed during class, we see young, black Chris adjusting to being thrust into an all-white school across town. His mother argues the change will provide him with enhanced opportunities—better education, stability, safer environment—compared to the offerings of the school located just across the street from home.

From this single episode, we are unable to see if his mother’s decision, ultimately, was right for Chris. We can glean that the sudden changes create new challenges for Chris, if only temporarily. Yet, these changes–singled out for his blackness, the lack of inclusivity and treatment as the outcast–could significantly, perhaps detrimentally, impact his growth and learning potential.

According to Beretta E. Smith, “Narrowcasting, the target of specific niche audiences, appears in many aspects, a way to keep the marginal as marginal. It encourages a center—a space where the really important demographics reside. Within this space, those who know how to behave, assimilate, and look live. Unfortunately, this space also harbors those who produce, distribute, exhibit, manage, and control” (70,78).

Still, Chris’ mother is the optimist, hopeful in the promise new (white) teachers and peers will provide.  Finally, her son could dodge negative influential and consuming trappings plagued by a certain minority setting.

While ”Everybody” was autobiographical in depicting the boyhood of actor/comic Chris Rock, the events of this television family likely paralleled the lives of African Americans thirsting for relatable media content. Author Kristal Brent Zook writes, “Such shows (help) us to know that our fears, desires, and memories are often collective, not individual. (Black shows) are not unlike those conversations our grandparents used to have on front porches, in segregated cities, so far away from home” (593). Entertainment value aside, is there some deeper profit beyond mere affirmation?

Meanwhile, violence within my neighborhood escalated in the mid-seventies. In 1977, my family left Dayton, settling into a small, all-white community in the suburbs.

By then, the search for my own identity had been stunted. It would be awhile before the search gained the momentum and significant insight useful in the journey into manhood and the world at-large.

As a student, no one then asked me what I thought. Did anyone care? Does anyone care now?

Probably not.

Brent Zook, Kristal. The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.

Smith-Shomade, Beretta E. Narrowcasting in the New World Information Order. Thousand Oaks: Sage P, 2004.