Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: our regularly scheduled program / David J. Leonard and Lisa A. Guerrero -- Consciousness on television: black power and mainstream narratives / David J. Leonard -- An interview with John Amos / Tammy Brown -- Looking for Lionel: making whiteness and blackness in All in the family and The Jeffersons / Lisa Woolfork -- What's your name? Roots, race, and popular memory in post-civil rights America / C. Richard King -- More serious than money: on Our gang, Diff'rent strokes, and Webster / Jared Sexton -- Post-racial, post civil rights: The Cosby show and the national Imagination / David J. Leonard -- A different sort of blackness: a different world in a post Cosby landscape / David J. Leonard -- Just another family comedy: The fresh prince of Bel Air, Family matters / Shiron V. Patterson -- Single black female: representing the modern black woman in "Living single" / Lisa A. Guerrero -- The black family in the new millennium: Bernie Mac, My wife and kids, and Everybody hates Chris / Qiana M. Cutts -- Blackness and children's programming: Sesame Street, A.N.T. Farm and The LeBrons / David J. Leonard -- "Black" comedy: the serious business of humor in In living color, Chappelle's show, and The Boondocks / Lisa A. Guerrero -- Selling blackness: commercials ? hip hop athletes hocking products / Regina Bradley -- The queen of television: Oprah Winfrey in relation to self and as a cultural icon / Billye N. Rhodes and Kristal Moore Clemons -- Tyler Perry takes over TV / Bettina L. Love -- B(l)ack in the kitchen: Food Network / Lisa A. Guerrero -- Ratchet responsibility: the struggle of representation and black entertainment television / Kristen J. Warner -- White authorship and the counterfeit politics of versimilitude on The wire / MichaelJohnson -- Representations of representation: urban life and media in season five of The wire / Bhoomi K. Thakore -- La-La's fundamental rupture: True blood's Lafayette and the deconstruction of normal / Kaila Adia Story -- Can the black woman shout?: a meditation on "Real" and utopian depictions of African American women on television / Rebecca Wanzo -- Scandal and black women in television / Kwakiutl L. Dreher -- Get a crew and make it happen: misadventures of awkward black girl and new media's potential for self-definition / Phillip Lamarr Cunningham -- Performing "blackness": Barack Obama, sport, and the mediated politics of identity / Michael D. Giardina and Kyle S. Bunds -- "New normal" in American television? race, gender, blackness, and the new racism / Paula Groves Price.

A comprehensive look at the history of African Americans on television that discusses major trends in black TV and examines the broader social implications of the relationship between race and popular culture as well as race and representation.