There was a show on television called “Diff’rent Strokes.” The show was confusing. Like most of us, I was happy to see Black faces on television, but I didn’t understand the show. Diff ’rent Strokes was a show about a white man, his daughter and his two adopted Black sons: Willis and Arnold. The white man got these boys because their parents died in a car accident and left their children to him. The family composition didn’t make any sense to me. A white man without a wife raising three kids, two of them Black. The other thing that confused me is that I could not understand who Willis and Arnold’s parents could have possibly been. Two people with no connections in the Black community. It was incredible to me that these two people would have died and their mother and father or their brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles or even cousins would not have swooped in and taken in their children. That is what we did as a people. Even today, I still find that concept in that show to be incredible.
I have come to realize that that show was not about who we were, but about who white supremacy wanted us to become. It was one of the first attempts, I know on TV, at conditioning Black people to accept certain ideas. When this show was on, the idea of leaving your kids with a white man would have horrified most of us. The white man is the greatest murderer and thief the world has known and every African, man, woman and child, knew it. Diff’rent Strokes or the people who created it wanted us to see the white man as a potential father of our children. They wanted us to see him like you see your white son-in-law today. That show wanted us to see the white man as the ideal father for our children. Diff’rent Strokes didn’t only have an impact on Black behaviour, it also impacted non-African people, because while we were all wondering why Willis wouldn’t tell Arnold what he is talking about, white people were going, “wow, there are other ways to own Black people!”
Everywhere we look today, we see white people adopting Black kids. Their only criterion for owning our children is that they are white, just like the white man who was given Willis and Arnold. Diff’rent Strokes made the idea that white people should raise Black kids palatable for us, instead of appalling or reminding us of white people, the enslavers. Even the Mormons, who have spent a hundred years preaching that Black people can’t go to heaven because being Black is a curse, have gotten into the owning Black kids game.
I didn’t understand who Willis and Arnold’s parents could have been back then, but I meet them everywhere today. Black people, who happen to be Black; they are integrated ultra individualistic people with no connection to the Black world. These people would see Diff’rent Strokes as found family and think that it represents an ideal for the world. We hear people talking about found family today because Diff’rent Strokes and shows like it was just one method used by white supremacy to attack the Black family. You don’t need your Black mother and father, your Black family, if you have a found white family. The white supremacy message in Diff’rent Strokes was a little hidden, but conditioning against the formation of Black families today is obvious and clear.