What We Actually Care About When We Ride for Diversity

As our daughter closes in on her fifth birthday, my wife and I have become desperate to move away from certain TV shows and movies that seem to be on repeat during our daughter’s TV allowance. There are six seasons of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on Netflix and we have seen every episode of that season multiple times. As much as I love Doc McStuffins, Disney just ain’t coming out with new episodes like that anymore, so the viewings of those episodes, too, have sent the adults in the room to the breaking point of never wanting to see the adorable Black girl doctor in pigtails ever fix another toy (that’s not entirely true, Doc is ridiculous disarming so I could probably put up with re-runs for a while longer). As my daughter has become more interested in live action shows, one that has been on our TV a lot more lately is KC Undercover, starring the impossibly talented Zendaya. Our daughter likes it because KC kicks bad guys’ ass with roundhouse kicks and stiff karate moves while being completely silly and willing to make a fool out of herself when not in combat. My wife and I enjoy it because KC is just one daughter in a whole family of secret agents. A whole Black family of secret agents. Even on Disney, the humor, the language, the slang is one that is familiar to us and there is a feeling of comfort for us as we simply want to be entertained for a half hour. We, as a Black family, didn’t accidentally land on an age appropriate comedy with a Black family. We seek thes…