ABC’s Blackish went there! If you were a kid who grew up in the late 70’s and early 80’s like I did then you might remember things like Saturday morning cartoons and Schoolhouse Rock. Schoolhouse Rock is single-handedly responsible for teaching me everything I needed to know about the government, nouns, adverbs and the number eight. It was the best way to learn. Catchy jingles played between the cartoons every hour (instead of commercials) to teach us stuff. Genius right?
I was elated when I watched the latest episode of ABC’s Black-ish. This week’s episode discussed Dre’s (Anthony Anderson) desire to celebrate Juneteenth in America instead of holidays like Columbus Day. In it he had to pitch the idea to the ad agency that he works for. He chose a Schoolhouse Rock-esque way to do this as well as a Hamilton-like stage production that starred the members of his own family. As a self proclaimed History Buff/Historian, I got my life with this episode.
Enter The Roots
I was just bumping Rising Down on my iTunes the other day. I ADORE The Roots. I chuckled with delight when I saw their cartoon caricatures in this Schoolhouse Rock inspired lesson. They covered basically everything you need to know to introduce you to what really happened to the African Slave in a catchy jingle. A catchy jingle which when played over and over again will basically teach our youth something that will be burned into their brains for the rest of their lives. (Why can’t we do this in real life?)
I still remember Schoolhouse Rocks favs like:
I’m Just A Bill that taught us how bills become laws
The Preamble that taught us about the constitution (to this day I can still sing the Preamble word for word)
A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing. right?
Ollie!! Boy! You better come and get this Adverb! (or however it went)
Check out, “I Am A Slave”, the Schoolhouse Rock Inspired jingle here
This 30 minute episode gave us so much! Here is the Hamilton-like segment, “We Built This”.
Blackish is an all around great show and I love it because it’s something that I can watch with my entire family, laugh and still get educated. I have brought Blackish to TheSistahCafe.com in the past referencing its female characters and the fact that they all embrace their natural hair. They have consistently used the show to deal with and reflect real life events and issues and for that I am appreciative. As a network ABC has the best Black Television shows out there right now with Shonda Rhimes and her bevy of drama’s on Thursday night plus Blackish, The Mayor, etc. I hate that Blackish is in the same time slot with another fav show of mine, This Is Us. Every week its a toss up as to which one I am gonna tune into but hey… first world problems right?
Check me out weekly as @TheSistahChick on Twitter as I LIVE tweet Blackish and other popular TV Shows
What was your favorite Schoolhouse Rock?
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