Amos 'n Andy

I received a collection of DVDs of the old Amos ‘n Andy TV show as a Christmas present this year. I remember watching the show in reruns when I was an adolescent, but I had not seen any of the programs since then. I have watched a few episodes and am now puzzled by the controversy over and suppression of the show over the years.

In what I have seen, there is nothing about the program demeaning to black people. The lead characters are of course comedic to the point of being goofy. It is a comedy show. However other black people who appear in the shows are depicted as normal, average, competent  Americans  - lawyers, actresses, department store executives, bank officers, FBI agents, secretaries, store clerks, and so on – with a complete lack of stereotyping or condescension. The main characters are a typical set of stock comedic types. There are the conniving schemer (Kingfish), the henpecked husband (Kingfish again), the straight man (Amos), the schemer’s frequent dupe (Andy), the cowardly, blustering loudmouth (Algonquin J. Calhoun, attorney at law), the shrewish wife (Sapphire), the harridan mother in law (Sapphire’s mother), the troublesome idiot brother-in-law (Leroy), the preening, ridiculous lady’s man (Andy again), and the witless sidekick or servant (Lightning).  One finds versions of all of them in comedies going back a long way indeed and having nothing to do with black people.

The episodes I’ve seen vary in quality. Some are funny. Some fall flat. One was touching. None depicts black people in as bad a light as do many more politically correct movies and TV shows (particularly the awful stuff from the 1970’s), and none provides any good reason for throwing the Amos ‘n Andy show into a memory hole. One could  half wonder if the real reason for suppressing the show is less the humor than the background of presenting black people  other than the main characters as ordinary Americans, something which goes against too many cherished political notions. I doubt it, but the entire situation is odd. As Kingfish might say, something funny going on here.