Atlanta: Refreshingly Black

The last few years have seen the rise of black television. I don't mean that BET made a comeback and is finally going away, I mean that television shows staring and created by minorities have been taking off. From the unexpected rise of Black-ish forcing main stays like Modern Family to change their air time because they can't compete, to the over the top and outrageous Empire. Followed by Being Mary Jane, Queen Sugar, How to Get Away With Murder, Pitch, Real Husbands of Hollywood, and so many more. We've seen an explosion of black faces on the screen, so when I call Donald Glover's Atlanta the blackest show on TV, I understand how people can seem surprised.

The story of Atlanta follows Glover's character Earnest Marks better known as Earn to his friends and family, as well as the group of people around him. There's his cousin Alfred, better known as Paper Boi, a local rapper who recently rose to fame after a shooting outside of a night club. Paper Boi's best friend, business partner and visionary Darius. The last main character is Vanessa, better known as Van, she's Earn's best friend and the mother of his child.

The blackness of Atlanta comes first from the fact that there's at least one person in the serious that everyone can relate to. Van is a college educated grade school teacher, and her mother is married to a multi-millionaire. Yet, she keeps finding herself on the short end of the stick. Earn is chasing his dreams, yet he keeps getting stopped by roadblocks called reality. Alfred wants to be a rapper, so he's funding his career through drug dealing, but neither one is really working for him right now. Darius is Paper Boi's right hand man, and also a drug dealer, but he keeps getting high on his own supply and sidetracked by things he finds more interesting, so he's not very good at it and often ends up in strange situations because his head was in the clouds.

But the real blackness comes from events that often have no major effect on the story, that just happen. They're the events that you see white people writing about in the recaps as shocking and eye opening. Yet if you look at the response from black people it's like "yeah, cops do be acting a fool," and the characters go on with their lives as if it never happened because it happens all the time.

I got my first dose of this during the second episode where Earn waits in the holding tank while in jail. The first moment comes when a man talks to his girlfriend and is heckled by other people in the cell for being gay. He's yelling he's not gay while they're pointing out "if that was a woman she'd be on the other side of the jail, but they here with us." Meanwhile the man is growing more upset and Earn is trying to console the man and his girlfriend by explaining sexuality is on a spectrum so there's really no such thing as gay or straight. The man is growing irritated and reaches a boiling point when someone yells "NIGGA YOU GAY." He becomes enraged with his girlfriend as well as Earn before sitting quietly as Earn minds his own business and the woman sits on the verge of tears.

I mean, that scene was ridiculously funny, I laughed until I had tears in my eyes and my chest. But at the same time it was a moment of realness because we really do treat people like shit because of the gender they choose to identify with or which gender they choose to sleep with. Sure, biologically she may have been a man, but she identified as a woman and the man who sleeping with her viewed her as a woman. So is it really gay if it's a man and a woman? It's a spectrum, and really nobody has a say in that relationship besides the two of them. It's a scene that makes you think after you're done laughing at the fact that a drunk man hollered from across the room "NIGGA YOU GAY," just to harass some random dude. Then everyone moves on with their life because we don't have the time to really think about how fluid sexuality is.

Later in the same episode there's a man who clearly suffers from some sort of handicap and everyone is joking with him. Earn is confused as to why this man is in here when he clearly has the mind of a child. It's explained that police lock this man up every weekend. The man goes around spitting water on other people in jail and the officers laugh and joke. Earn states the man should be getting help instead of arrested as the man spits water on one of the officers. Soon several officers are beating the man as he curls up in a ball and they yell stop resisting. Everyone looks away not wanting to become involved. In the last episode of the season a man runs out of his house and flees police only for none of them to give chase, instead they pull out their guns and fire instantly shooting him dozens of times in the back. Only for Paper Boi to state "y'all ain't have to do him like that and then the show continues with their plot only acknowledging it again when Earn asks for his coat back.

On one occasion Earn is trying to make money by selling his phone and Darius explains he can get him a lot more money for it. They go on a trip trading the $200 phone for a sword which they then trade for a $2000 dog. They then give the dog to a farmer who walks away. Earn asks where the money is and Darius explains that the man is going to breed the dog with his to make some pure bred puppies. He'll get $2000 for the dog and he'll sell the puppies for for $900 each and Earn will get $450 from each puppy. Darius explains it's an investment. Earn starts to freak out and Darius asks is he okay to which he replies:

I'm actually kind of fucked,see, I'm poor, Darius, OK? And poor people don't have time for investments, because poor people are too busy trying not to be poor, OK? I need to eat today, not in September!

Later Earn is seen taking the bus to Van's house to give her the money so she can feed their daughter. On the way he's forced to bite a sandwich by a member of the Nation of Islam on a bus. Which brings me to my next point. The show is too damn funny. I think my favorite episode is number seven titled "B.A.N." The show features Paper Boi on a talk show called Montague on the Black American Network. The show features Paper Boi trying to explain his tweets on transgender people while being cut off at every turn by an older white woman who blames hip hop and claims if Paper Boi had a father this wouldn't be an issue. It's a nice little joke on how people like Ann Coulter blame everything on hip hop and black people lacking fathers, which is a myth. The host of the show is a Don Lemon parody who acts just like Don Lemon. Paper Boi keeps trying to explain that he has no issue with transgender people, he just doesn't want to have sex with Caitlin Jenner.

The actual debate is funny but it's the ads that are the real killer. There's an ad for Arizona Iced Tea where it simply states "the price is on the can" because, well it is and we all know it. There's several for the Dodge Challenger because we all know someone who drives one. I once theorized that every black male that joins the armed forces gets one. In the end we learn the man driving it is recently divorced and told the judge "just leave me my Dodge Charger," because it was the only thing that mattered. BUT, the segment on transracial people was the killer. Just the idea of a teenage black kid believing he's transracial because he thinks he's really a 40 year old white man from Colorado is hilarious. Montague brings the teenager on live only for Paper Boi to respond that the whole trans argument stemming from him not wanting to sleep with Caitlin Jenner is ridiculous and he can't stop laughing at a transracial teenager. Montague asks the boy how he feels about transgender people and he goes on a Bill O'Reilly styled rant about them being disgusting and Paper Boi laughs harder because this guy is way more transphobic than Paper Boi could ever be, yet everyone is viewing hip hop as the problem.

The thing about Atlanta is that it's refreshingly unapologetic and black. Yeah, Empire is black but it's an exaggeration that draws white people in the same way Love and Hip Hop does. Yes, Black-ish is also black with no apologies but there's a significant amount of time spent poking fun at how white people are extremely sheltered. Atlanta just doesn't have time for exaggerating to ridiculous levels and it's too busy depicting our reality to poke fun at white people, because the thing is that despite what you hear on the news and see on the internet, we don't care about what white people are doing unless it affects us.

Atlanta is the sense that if you were hanging out with your friends and talking about the week, these would be the kinds of stories told. From getting extra sauce on your wings because the owner of the local spot thinks you're awesome to the family member that married into money and thinks they're better than everyone else now or the family member who always talks about how pro black they are, but marries a white person who tries too hard to prove they're down with the cause. Atlanta is black, super black all the while managing to prove that "hood shit and black shit is super different."

You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet. You can also check out his playthrough of Sleeping Dogs.
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