"Black-ish" TV: Biracial Mom Alert

Rainbow Johnson is a biracial woman, an anesthesiologist, and the mother of four charming children. Andre Johnson is her black husband, an executive at a predominantly white Los Angeles advertising firm, and arguably the lead character of the new ABC sitcom Black-ish. The following exchange takes place in the couple’s bedroom. Andre is bemoaning the way that blackness has been coopted by American pop culture. He hates that his boss has just made him the Senior VP of the company's new Urban Division. 

Rainbow:   “Just keep it real.”

Andre:       “Keep it real? This coming from a biracial or mixed or omni-colored-complexion whatever-it-is-they’re-calling-it-today woman, who technically isn’t even really black?’

Rainbow:   "If I'm not really black, then can somebody please tell my hair and my ass??"

Andre:       “Hey. You don’t get it.”

Rainbow:   “No?”

Andre:       “This is how it starts.”

Rainbow:   “What?”

Andre:       “Junior wants to play field hockey.”

I love Rainbow, like a favorite relative.

She doesn’t care whether her son plays basketball or field hockey.

Her parents were nudists: my mother was raised on a commune.

She has a big head of wild dark frizzy hair: in my house we call it wild-woman hair. 
She lovingly bats her doe eyes at her sweet-faced children, marveling at their ability to ignore color lines and labels. She’s not worried that they don't think of Barack Obama as the first black American president - because he's the ONLY American president they've known! Isn't that so wonderful?




Some of her words and attitudes come straight out of my multiracial mothering handbook. Her wifely antics are scarily familiar too. The fact that my husband is white makes our family ineligible for direct comparison to this fictional clan. But we all see ourselves in them. And what I appreciate most is that through all sorts of domestic/marital/parenting disputes, Rainbow wins.

Rainbow is the progeny of Norman Lear’s groundbreaking biracial character on The Jeffersons, Jenny Willis. The daughter of the Jeffersons’ “zebra” neighbors, she eventually married their son Lamont, and appeared sporadically throughout the show's eleven seasons. But Jenny Willis never shone like Rainbow does.

Like the Jeffersons, the Johnsons' family portrait is one of affluence. They live in a fancy neighborhood, in a very large house with a swimming pool and immaculate landscaping. The adults, including Andre’s father (whose residential status is unclear but who’s in their business all the time), have differing views as to the condition of their own blackness, and the potency of blackness in the modern world. Race is not the central topic of every scene, or even every episode. In fact, its their conspicuous wealth that really qualifies their lifestyle.

During episode 2, my detail-oriented daughter said, “I wonder who keeps such a big house so clean, with both parents so busy working.”  She's right, there’s no sign of any hired help. It's impossible to believe that Rainbow and Andre are managing to work full-time AND keep all that house and all those children so clean and lovely without help. 

I remind my daughter of the importance of there being a biracial mom (who happens to remind us of myself) on TV. Focus on that, dearie.

My daughter tells me that I think about race too much.

She’s eleven. She doesn’t care how the Johnsons are being perceived/received in other parts of the country, where wealthy black families are nonexistent.  She doesn’t think about race much. She's more interested in people’s abilities than in their ancestry. A product of whose influence? I wonder. Like the Johnsons, my husband and I want our children to be informed and self-aware, but not burdened.

This “keeping it real” is a mighty task.