For many of us, we grew up waiting all week for The Cosby Show to come on! And in later years The Cosby Show AND A Different World! We’d plan how as adults we’d be the educated, classy parents that were Cliff and Claire Huxtable. We’d throw swanky, cool anniversary parties for our parents, complete with lip-synching that would set a tone for all other parties, and we’d somehow hang out with legends a la Lena Horne and Stevie Wonder. That story was the story of many growing up as a part of the black middle class in the 80’s and 90’s. Your parents were educated- sometimes the first in the family to attend college and work in corporate America and they expected much from you, and you had no qualms with delivering.

Fast forward 30 years or so; and now we’re the adults, the parents, the new torch bearers of our generation, who like our parents continued and excelled in a lifestyle we grew up with but with more technology, an ever evolving world, better paying jobs, and more stress about keeping it all together all while keeping it real. We are Black-ish and the show of the same name is for us! AND WE ARE HERE FOR IT! This show gets so much right, that during the premiere, we had the constant thought; this is ME! We too head nod at and fist bump the other black people at our job, because we’re making our way up the career ladder and in the words of Jay Z, “I do this for the culture”. For those with kids; we try to instill a sense of pride in them for black culture beyond what has been appropriated by society at large and we question who they will be if we don’t teach them. Hell, at the end we were even trying to figure out if we were too old to have a Bro-Mitzvah or not! This show gets it and it gets us. Many times, to be black, educated, and have it seemingly all together is a novelty at best. There are barrages of comments that you are not the norm, unrealistic, or not like other black people; many of the same comments that were tossed to The Cosby Show and also being pinned on Black-ish.

But here’s the thing, why is a show about what could be easily commended as positive black imagery considered a negative. So what EVERYONE doesn’t live like that! Some people do! In fact a lot of people do! And if you want people to perhaps achieve this perceived success, don’t you think it’s important for them to see it, for themselves and not just black culture via the skewed eye of the nightly news and reality TV shows? Always being told that you will never get out of the ghetto, will continue to struggle, and never achieve much gets pretty tiring. Your only view of inspirational life cannot always be Lil’ Wayne, Jeezy, Love and Hip Hop! The one thing that we lack as of late is the diversity of viewpoints and imagery. That’s not to knock those artists or that TV show, because we will rock to some “RIP” and catch up on a little reality TV via a reunion show, but for us, we know about life outside of those things. What about for the members of our society, that do not?

It’s time for a change! It’s time to put this advertising executive and his wife, who is a DOCTOR on the pedestal for a little while. And we all KNOW our girls are due for a positive black woman on TV! There are only so many times we can refer them back to the illustrious Claire Huxtable. The others have had their turn, give Black-ish theirs!

And check out the official Bro-Mitzvah here! We’re so going to have one of these!