ABSTRACT

Using critical rhetoric, this chapter analyzes the ways in which the television sitcom text blackish wrestles with “political struggles,” particularly about matters of race, and intentionally plays a resistive role against our dominant hegemonic culture. My argument unfolds in three parts. First, I introduce the Johnsons and the dynamic racial and class tensions that they explore as a Black upper-class family that is flourishing in the Obama Era. The bulk of my argument unfolds as I next explore these tensions as articulated in the Hope episode, where the parents wrestle with “the Talk”—that is, how to both protect and prepare their children for their racial reality. And finally, the epilogue maps blackish’s bold response to our cultural shift from Obama to Trump, returning to the theme of hope and inviting white viewers to recognize their own complicity as our nation’s racial formations move forward.