Category: Black Literature

Thelma from Good Times: “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”

On By thewriterfredIn Black Culture, Black History, Black Literature1 Comment

2015ZORAI am the kind of person who likes to reflect back on his past and feel good about what I have left behind. That is not to say that I don’t also enjoy the present, because today I feel that I am involved in some very satisfying projects. But my past reflects my present and has an impact on my future. For these reasons, I can share with my readers the joy I felt last week at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, when I strolled up the rows of vendors and saw BernNadette Stanis, better known as Thelma from the sit-com Good Times, sitting behind a table in the prime location, autographing copies of her newest book The Last Night: A Caregivers Journey Through Transition and Beyond. A long line of admirers stood waiting for an opportunity to get her to sign their copy of the book, possibly take a picture with her and get a poster of the Good Times show. I soon discovered that she was a featured author of the Festival.

Evidently from the size of the line of admirers seeking the opportunity to take a picture with BernNadette, many others also love to dabble in nostalgia. But we are very choosy about what we allow to settle into our memory bank. And I believe most would agree Thelma and Good Times with J.J., Michael and the other outstanding actors and actresses (especially the late great Esther Rolle) made the show a must-see on Monday nights in the middle 1970’s. Good Times was especially important because it represented the first television show that profiled a complete Black family. Not only were the parents married and the father present, but also actively involved in the everyday life of their children. However, I believe Thelma as the first Black female teenager featured in a television series left a lasting impression on the hearts and minds of the American public. Black families loved the image she portrayed as a young, beautiful and brilliant Black teenager. It was almost like Nina Simone recorded “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” specifically for her.

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ebca3bf384c2364b0a34147f201ea1b2BernNadette’s portrayal of Thelma and what she projected on television enamored the public to her. She possessed the attributes of a beauty queen, and also a brainy queen. Her “smarts” shined as much as her looks. And that represented a first for a young Black actress in Hollywood. When I had the pleasure of meeting BernNadette years ago, she mentioned that her role had originally been created as nothing more than to feed J.J. for his punch lines. But Ms. Rolle recognized BernNadette’s talents, and insisted that her part in the show be expanded and once Norman Lear did so, she shined often soaring over everyone else.

Her enduring popularity continued to shine brightly in Eatonville, Florida last Saturday, as lines of men, women and children anxiously awaited their turn to talk with one of our many queens of the race. In her recent book she writes, “Being an author and speaker, I travel and tour all over the United States and people constantly tell me how much they loved Good Times and what that show meant to them growing up. They tell me that their children watch it, even today. They express to me with gratitude the values and lessons it has shown them. But most of all, they call it safe TV.”(Stanis, BernNadette, The Last Night; A Caregivers Journey Through Transition and Beyond, Worthingham Publishing, Beverly Hills, 2015, p. 55)

I am just one of many Black artists who have been rather critical of the roles that our beautiful young actresses are forced to play in today’s media. That is because we still consider Thelma, as the prototype of the image a Black actress should portray in a sit-com or drama that our young girls may view on a weekly basis. Undoubtedly, the transition from a Thelma to the more sordid and questionably immoral roles our Black actresses portray in today’s television series, represents the transition our culture has taken since the late 1960’s and 70’s, when there existed a certain reverence for our race. Now, that seems to have disappeared with the “Crack Epidemic of the 1980’s and 90’s. It has transformed us in an unnatural way, so that we no longer proclaim, “I’m Black and I’m Proud.” Instead we now bemoan the gang killings, the deplorable drop out levels of our young from school, and the unacceptable reality of our babies having babies all over this country.

BernNadette Stanis is an artist with many different talents. She spent her early years as an actress, but few know she is also a painter and a writer. Her recent book about her commitment as caregiver during her mother’s final years, is a very heartfelt touching account of a mother/daughter relationship. It is a testament to the fact that BernNadette’s role as Thelma in Good Times reflected her values in real life. The title is adapted from the very last night she spent with her mother, before she passed away from that dreaded Alzheimer’s disease. It is BernNadette’s third book and she is now working on her first novel, a genre that is suitable because of the roles she has played, and continues to play on television. She has a very strong inclination to write fiction and told me that she is determined to complete her first love story by the end of the year. It is rather fitting that she write about love because her entire persona exudes love and hope for her people. I am proud to proclaim that she is my friend.

Thelma

Dr. King and Malcolm X: Dream or Nightmare

On By thewriterfredIn Black Culture, Black History, Black Literature, Black Men3 Comments

On Monday of last week, millions of men, women and children celebrated the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in church ceremonies, plays, marches and speeches throughout this country and all over the world. All of these celebrations were primarily based on the dream that Dr. King expounded during his 1963 speech in front of the Lincoln Monument. Here in San Antonio, the city has even adopted a “Dream Week” that runs from January 11 to the day after the King March. It can easily be surmised that the Dream has taken the front and center position in the entire Civil Rights Movement of the twenty-first century.

malcomxHowever nine months after the famous King speech, Malcolm X challenged the premise of the Dream in a speech delivered at the University of Ghana. He exclaimed, “So if someone else from America comes to you to speak, they’re probably speaking as Americans and they speak as people who see America through the eyes of an American. And usually those types of persons refer to America as the American Dream. But for twenty-million of us of African descent, it is not an American dream, it is an American nightmare.”

From a historical perspective we had two Black leaders viewing the plight of their people from different lenses. These two points of view still exist today and speak to the division within the race. No doubt for many Black Americans, King’s dream has become a reality and they function well within an integrated, capitalist system. But for far too many of the very people that King set out to help prosper, they still remained trapped right in the middle of Malcolm’s nightmare.

You need only go to any large city in this country and the pattern of economic deprivation is the same. There are no jobs for the youth and only minimal jobs for an unacceptable percentage of adults. While the national unemployment rate had fallen in 2015 to a low 5%, the rate for Blacks still hovers above 10%. And the figures for young Blacks between the ages of 16 and 19 are astounding. Over the years it has been 393% of the national average. In 2013, the figure was 36% while the national average was 7.3%. When measuring these statistics against the dream or the nightmare no doubt the latter prevails.

An even more devastating statistic is the number of young Blacks who are the victims of violence. In the years 2008 and 2009, 5,740 children and teens died from gunfire. Of that number 3,892 were homicide victims and 2,320 were Blacks. Again, measuring these statistics against the dream or the nightmare the answer as to which one prevails is quite evident.

We are now confronted with the deplorable situation in Flint, Michigan where our children and adults have been drinking, washing and bathing in water that has been contaminated with lead. These children, as well as adults, will suffer the consequences of this evidently deliberate refusal to cure the problem by the elected officials in the state of Michigan, for the rest of their life. If one were to ask the men, women and children in Flint if they view their condition as part of a dream or nightmare, there is no question how they would respond.

martin-luther-king-and-malcolm-xI am not trying to make an empirical argument in support of Malcolm’s nightmare analogy but only to point out that we have a long ways to go before the dream is realized, for not only a few, but everyone. At some point we must stop placing the emphasis on the Dream aspect of Dr. King’s speech but more on the un-cashed check that was the real message he delivered in 1963. When his speech is examined from that perspective it becomes quite compatible with Malcolm’s nightmare and unites the two leaders in their outlook on the condition of Blacks in this country.

As we begin the second half of the second decade of the twenty-first century, those Black Americans who have achieved the dream must pause in their savoring of success and realize that we still have a great deal of work before us. They cannot afford to be content until no Black man, woman or child is left behind. And that simply means that the unemployment rate among Blacks is equivalent to the national average, the killing of our youth by the police and from gang warfare ends, and that Black Americans are given the same opportunities to succeed in a country that claims to offer equality to all.