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The Gilded Age shows the importance of Black folks behind the camera. It’s the first period drama that has done a Black storyline right. It shows the world of colorism, class, and wealth within the Black community during the post-Civil War era, and does it seamlessly as it examines the same within the white Robber Baron class.
It also shows segregation, but in the complicated way that Jim Crow affected each group. There were friendships based on genuine feelings, and then there were slights that came from the color line. Also, and this is what I love the most, is that Black characters and Black life in the Gilded Age isn’t based upon what they don’t get from the white community. Instead, the Black community built its system, good or bad, without regard to what white folks were doing.
And that’s been the paradox when it comes to integration. When integration happened, some of those Black institutions struggled to be maintained. That said, I think we’re going back to that pre-integration period. This isn’t a rejection of white people as friends as such, but the reaffirmation of Black institutions and culture as a protection against white supremacists.
I said that Trump killed integration, and I believe it. What’s next is gonna be what I call intragration. Black folks won’t abide by a Colored Only world. Still, it will be a world where Black focused institutions will not rely on the entities that have folded, like predominantly white universities, when confronted by white supremacists.
In other words, go to an HBCU, y’all.
