The Push and Pull of Watching Mad Men While Black

When I was still a teenager nearing my high school graduation, I remember going to (being dragged to) my father’s work functions or to dinner at the home of his colleagues. My father is a really smart man – brilliant, really – and was a chemist at, let’s say, a really large company. He had ascended into some management hierarchy where the higher he rose, the less people he saw that looked like him. There were times we would be at these large functions with a hundred plus people and there would be two, maybe three other black families. My father didn’t seem to know them. Years later, I realized they may have been at a different employment level than my father and therefore didn’t cross paths with him. It was a reaffirmation that Black folks were still “out of place” in the realm of successful business structures. That was also in the mid ’90s. I used to watch Mad Men with two different minds: this is a really well put together show that entertains me, and this is a show that doesn’t relate to me in any way, shape or form, with no interest in doing so. For those that aren’t familiar, Mad Men is a drama of an advertising firm in New York during the 1960s (mostly). It is a rich and beautiful TV show with a great cast and almost as great writing. The costume and set design is possibly the best in TV history and it often is very true to the times. I guess. As I’ve stated before in talking about period TV shows, they almost always focus on white upper class communities. The combo of…