The Black Wonder Years? Why It’s Time We Finally Dismantle Racism On Television

On Wednesday, news broke of ABC’s commitment to pilot a reboot of its highly popular television series The Wonder Years. The show, which ran from 1988-1993 and featured a white family living in the 1960’s, would be remade into a series about a Black family living during the same era. News of the possible show, along with some other recent television developments, begs the question:

Will the television industry finally address its long-running racial disparity in the types of stories shown on the small screen?

The possibility of a rebooted version of The Wonder Years has fans old and new buzzing. The concept, which comes from Dave executive producer Saladin K. Patterson, Lee Daniels, Fred Savage, and 20th Century Fox TV, would tell the story of how a middle-class Black family in Montgomery, Alabama grew up during the late-1960s – the same window of time that covered the original Wonder Years family. If the project is greenlit, Savage, the young star of the original series, would produce the pilot.

The news regarding The Wonder Years comes in the same week as The Walt Disney Co. announced a deal with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s production company, Ra Vison Media. As part of the deal, ESPN Films, owned by Disney, will produce a docuseries on Kaepernick’s life, as well as also explore producing scripted and unscripted stories that focused on issues related to race, social injustice, and issues of equity. The deal is also intended to elevate the work of minority storytellers, directors, and producers.

“During this unprecedented time, The Walt Disney Co. remains committed to creating diverse and inclusive content that resonates and matters,” said Bob Iger, Disney’s executive chairman.

In the wake of recent wave of protests following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks, the United States has been engaged in a national dialogue about the role of systemic racism across the country. The debate leaves no aspect of American culture unexamined, and there have already been dramatic changes in the worlds of sports, food, and entertainment. Hollywood is not immune to the discussions, and as more individuals focus on the racial gap in America’s multi-billion entertainment industry, studios are quickly trying to catch up.

A recent report by the Think Tank for Inclusion and Equity points out the troubling aspects of how stories for television are shaped in ways that reflect racial bias. Writers from underrepresented groups are twice as likely to experience discrimination in the television industry (68.5%) than writers from overrepresented/white groups (30.8%). There is also substantial evidence of systemic racism against writers, which affects both their titles and their seniority.

Equally troubling is the way that experiences in the writing room change the narratives shown on television. 39.4% of respondents to the report witnessed erasure and/or stereotyping of underrepresented characters on their shows and 33.9% of underrepresented writers have been asked to change a character’s identity to increase the odds of selling a project. The consequences for pushing back on such changes are also chilling – over one in ten respondents report being fired for pushing back on stereotypical characters and storylines.

These statistics, along with recent data from the latest Writers Guild of America Inclusion Report, make clear the dire need for not only rebooting television shows, but also for reforming the industry that produces them. If, in the words of popular film critic Roger Ebert, movies are “empathy machines,” television shows are those machines on rocket fuel. As America spends more time watching television, television writers have an even more important role to play in helping shape the way viewers experience the narratives of Black Americans, especially as the pandemic nearly eliminates the present demand for big screen movies.

Individuals like NBA star LeBron James and his media conglomerate Springhill Entertainment are looking to fill the void. The multimedia company, started by James and his longtime manager and business partner Maverick Carter, recently raised $100 million from investors including Guggenheim Investments, UC Investments, Sister Investments, and SC Holding in order to expand their production capacity. Yet even with stars like James, Oprah Winfrey, and others increasing their investments in television, there is still an even greater need for Black and other underrepresented writers, directors, producers, and actors to gain a larger and proportionate share of the small screen. Production deals like the Kaepernick/Disney partnership, and possible reboots of shows like The Wonder Years that include Black casts are just the beginning.

If America is going to truly address its deeply entrenched biases around race and class, it is going to need to start seeing different stories, and in particular, more Black stories on its televisions. The change is necessary and long overdue, and an entire industry of Black cultural creators deserve to tell those stories in ways they want to tell them and to audiences that need to hear them. 

Will the studios let them? Stay tuned.