Comforting Image of ‘The Cosby Show’ Places Equality at Risk

To some it may seem ironic that on the day of the last episode of “The Cosby Show,” the United States was reminded of the racial turmoil and tension it had hoped had become a thing of the past. Our about-to-be-published research into the connection between racial attitudes and TV images, based on conversations with ordinary Americans, suggests, however, that television has helped to make white America complacent about racial inequities.

“The Cosby Show,” in many ways, changed the way television thinks about portraying black people. Since “The Cosby Show,” affluent African-Americans have become a fairly common sight on network television. Characters on U.S. television were always inclined to be middle or upper-middle class--now, in the ‘90s, black people have become an equal and everyday part of this upwardly mobile world.

“The Cosby Show” is, in this sense, more than just another sitcom. It has become a symbol of a new age in popular culture where black actors no longer have to suffer the indignities of playing a crude and limited array of black stereotypes, where white audiences can accept TV programs with more than just a “token” black character.

Our research interviews indicate that the show succeeded in what it set out to do, allowing white viewers to identify with a likable black family, while generating a feeling of intense pride among black viewers. There is much to thank Bill Cosby for (as the nation’s press has pointed out in recent days, including Calendar’s cover article on “Cos, the Huxtables and America,” April 26).

However, our interviews also reveal a more disturbing aspect. These problems stem not so much from the presence of “The Cosby Show” but from the absence of shows featuring dignified black characters who live ordinary, working-class lives.

The rioting in Los Angeles is a graphic reminder that the social success of black TV characters in the wake of “The Cosby Show” does not reflect a trend toward black prosperity in the big wide world beyond television. On the contrary, the Cosby era has witnessed a comparative decline in the fortunes of most African Americans in the United States.

Among white people, we discovered, the admission of black characters to TV’s affluent world gives credence to the idea that racism is no longer a barrier to upward mobility. Most white people are extremely receptive to such a message. Like Ronald Reagan’s folksy feel-good patriotism, it allows them to feel good about themselves and about society.

The Cosby/Huxtable persona (along with the many other black professionals it has brought forth into the TV world) tells people that, as one person put it, “There really is room in the United States for minorities to get ahead, without affirmative action.” This complacency was dramatically revealed in the shocked reaction of most Americans to an apparently racist verdict in the trial of Rodney King. We ought not to have been so surprised.

The whole notion of affirmative action and welfare programs has become a hot issue in contemporary politics. George Bush is able to use his opposition to such programs as a way of mobilizing white votes. Our study is good news for the President. It reveals that the opposition to these programs among white people is overwhelming. Particularly notable was that while most white people were prepared to acknowledge that such policies were once needed, they are no longer thought to be necessary.

However, almost any social index you look at (whether it be education, health, housing, employment or wealth) indicates that we live in a society in which black and white people are not equal. So why are affirmative action and anti-poverty programs suddenly thought to be no longer necessary?

Partly, we would suggest, because our popular culture tells us so.

Television, despite the liberal intentions of many who write its stories, has pushed culture backward. White people are not prepared to deal with the problem of racial inequality because they can no longer see that there is a problem.

“The Cosby Show,” our study made increasingly clear, was an intrinsic part of this process of public disenlightenment. Television becomes Dr. Feelgood, indulging its white audience so that their response to the racial inequality becomes a guilt-free, self-righteous inactivity. It is an ideological conjuring trick that plays neatly into the irresistible recipe of “don’t worry, be happy.”

This has saddled us with a new, repressed form of racism. For, while television now portrays a world of equal opportunity, most white people know enough about the world to see that black people achieve less, on the whole, than white people. They know that black people are disproportionately likely to live in poor neighborhoods or drop out of school.

How can this knowledge be reconciled with the smiling faces of TV’s Huxtables, whose success appears to have been achieved so effortlessly?

If we are blind to the roots of racial inequality, embedded in our society’s class and racial structure, then there is only one way to reconcile this paradoxical state of affairs.

If white people are disproportionately more successful, they then must be disproportionately smarter or more willing to work hard. The smiling, jovial face of Bill Cosby begins to fade into the more sinister and threatening face of Willie Horton.

And, for a jury from a comfortable, segregated suburb of Los Angeles, Willie Horton was very easily transformed into Rodney King.