Remembering "Theo" (Malcolm-Jamal Warner)

Hello friends,

The news of Malcolm-Jamal Warner's death hit me hard, not just because he was a young Black man, well younger than me any way, but also because of what he represented. All of us have actors and shows that represent our childhood, that gave us something to relate to or aspire to, and The Cosby Show* ** was one of those shows for young, Black people of a certain generation, and perhaps even for their children.

This was the first show I had seen where the families looked like other families I knew. Never mind that I was growing up in the Caribbean, and this show was set in the USA. It featured professional parents and with values similar to those that I saw around me. It featured families. It included aspects of Black culture and life, and the children in the show were people around my own age. As I said, I could see myself and others like me reflected on the screen, and that was important.

Why It Mattered

To know why it was so important, you would have to look back at some of the other roles that passed for representation on the Hollywood screen. I'll just give one example. Countless people I know who are racialised as white love Gone with the Wind, set in the Deep South in the US Civil War and Reconstruction period.

I don't, not just because of the generational trauma it represents, but also because of the original of the mammy stereotype, played ably by Hattie McDaniel. That's not the kind of representation that brings me joy, and it's worse still because she couldn't even attend the premier of the film because of segregation.

As a child and teen, portrayals like that represented part of my history, but they weren't part of my present. The Cosby Show was one of several programmes that changed that.

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