Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
“Snowfall” has come to an end.
Created in part by the late John Singleton, the show, which ended Wednesday night after six seasons, had an intriguing premise. It asked what would happen if a relatively good Black kid from Compton, Calif. — much like the little boys at the beginning of Singleton’s classic film “Boyz n the Hood” — was turned into a monster by America?
For many critics, the melodramatic elements of the show overshadowed a very important fact that the FX series tried to dramatize: that the CIA was largely responsible for drugs getting into the Black community.
For all the commercials where Nancy Reagan implored us to “Just Say No,” for every D.A.R.E. classroom session led by police officers in the ’80s and ’90s, the unspoken truth behind it all was that the U.S. government allowed the flood of crack cocaine into Black communities — and “Snowfall” captured the effects of that truth.
“Snowfall” was unflinching in how it showed the truth about being Black in America. For me, the show was a revelation. It helped me understand my uncle, who I thought, for many years, was crazy because he blamed everything on “the white man.”
John Ware, my father’s brother, lived in a small house on what Black folks in Oklahoma City called “the Eastside.” Really it was a five-mile area on the northeast side of the city where you would find a preponderance of soul food restaurants, cannabis dispensaries and liquor stores. But if you went to the home of the Thunder and asked for directions to the eastside, every Black person who preferred sweet potato pie to pumpkin pie would point you in the right direction.
White folks would have no idea what the hell you were talking…
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