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B(l)ack Like It Never Left: Race, Resonance, and Reruns
- Johnson, Patrick
- Advisor(s): Leonardo, Zeus
Abstract
This audience research study explores how 1990s Black sitcoms such as Martin, A Different
World, Living Single, Moesha, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air serve as a form of heritage for
Black millennials. To better understand this phenomenon, I conducted semi-structured, in-depth
interviews and focus groups with 26 Black undergraduate students at a large, public, research
university in the western part of the United States. In addition to interviews and focus groups, I
performed textual analyses of sitcom episodes as well as the various popular texts produced in
response to the shows. My analysis reveals how Black millennials sample ideas about race,
gender, and class from 1990s Black sitcoms as well as how they critique the continued
circulation of the texts in Black popular culture. Identifying social mobility as a central theme in
most 1990s Black sitcoms, participants used the shows to help shape their professional, social,
and educational aspirations. Specifically, participants stated that the shows helped them imagine
themselves as college students who would go on to pursue careers with high-earning potential,
while also framing their expectations of the romantic and platonic relationships necessary to
achieve upward mobility. Participants described watching reruns of 1990s Black sitcoms as a
normative part of their childhood and thus imagined most Black millennials as having a
knowledge of and affinity for the shows. For many participants, their 1990s Black sitcom
fandom was understood as a form of familial inheritance as they credited their parents and older
siblings with introducing them to the shows. Participants drew on their affinities for 1990s Black
sitcoms as points of connection between them and other Black students. Despite participants
finding great utility in the sitcoms, they also described vexed relationships with the programs.
This was particularly true related to Martin, which was the most popular sitcom among
participants. Participants attributed their ambivalent relationship with Martin to what they
described as the show’s penchant for affirming and advancing negative stereotypes about Black
women and the show’s troubling depictions of Black heterosexual romantic relationships.
Main Content
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