You take the black, you take the white…

Yesterday, an old friend, one I haven’t really talked to since college, send me this timely link.

Go ahead. Click here. I’ll wait.

Did you click? If you were afraid, it was just a photo of Lisa Whelchel (Blair) with Busta Rhymes, posted yesterday at some kind of Sirius XM festival? I don’t know. I don’t really know how this Instagram thing works. If anyone can tell me more about where and what this event was, that would be rad.

More importantly, I just realized that I freakin’ saw Busta Rhymes back in ’02 at the Area 2 Festival! I don’t know much about hip hop; I went to Area 2 ’cause of David Bowie. But I remember “Pass the Courvoisier,” during which Busta indeed passed the Courvoisier. I didn’t get any. 🙁

And so I’ve decided that this is an excellent time to talk about how The Facts of Life addressed race.

Tootie.

And thus ends the discussion of The Facts of Life and race.

Nah, just kidding. Sort of. It is true that Tootie might as well have been called “Token.” But the show meant well, even when it was hamfisted.

Their first attempt was Season 2’s “Who Am I?” Tootie goes through an identity crisis when Fred, the kid who fills the vending machine and happens to be a plot device black, points out that all Tootie’s friends are white. Excellent hijinks ensue, leading Tootie to realize that having white friends doesn’t mean she has lost her identity as a black woman. Oh there are some marvelous moments in that episode, including Tootie calling a convention of all the black girls at Eastland and everyone finding out that indeed, some white boys are better dancers than some black boys. But as I mentioned in my last post, in that episode and for the remainder of the series, Tootie only dated or even showed interest in black boys, and only two of them, and they were played by the same actor.

In fact, sometimes people forget that The Facts of Life was a Diff’rent Strokes spinoff (Mrs. Garrett used to be the Drummonds’ maid), and Arnold and Willis made appearances in both the pilot and the Season 2 opener, and I think some other episodes. Arnold had a crush on Tootie. It’s like every black kid on the show who wasn’t related to Tootie had a thing for her. Now that I think about it, even MacKenzie Astin’s character Andy had a crush on Tootie at one point. Maybe she was just that hot.

The show did address interracial relationships in the episode where Natalie goes out with Tootie’s cousin and Tootie is all scandalized, thinking Natalie has ulterior motives for the interest. There was a spin-off attempt in which Tootie’s aunt is married to MacGyver (side note: it doesn’t have a ‘u’ and never did), and although their interraciality was pointed out, most of the episode was about race-neutral marriage conflict.

Otherwise, though, we almost never saw black characters who weren’t Tootie’s family, Tootie’s contrived love interests, or part of a plot about Tootie’s shenanigans (the black Eastland girls convention appeared again in the episode where Tootie was obsessed with Jermaine Jackson).

Wait, you mean there are people who are neither white nor black?

Of course! There was Miko, the Japanese Eastland student, whose father was a total stereotype very very strict, insisting on symphonies and studying when Miko wanted rock concerts and Jo’s motorcycle (and possibly Jo). And there was Enrico, the undocumented immigrant that Jo was going to marry to keep in the country, and the only Latino I recall ever seeing on the show. And of course there was the episode in which the show totally acknowledged that Native Americans exist. HA HA HA HA HA. No, actually there’s no show like that, don’t be silly.

OK, so the show didn’t do the greatest job addressing complex race issues. But it didn’t do the worst job either. It’s a product of its time, to be sure, but maybe it was a tiny, tiny bit ahead of it?