I was on a transatlantic flight not long ago, where I decided to watch a re-run of The Bill Cosby Show.

Although decades had passed, I clearly recalled the controversy it elicited throughout the nation…particularly among it’s black population.  There had been outraged cries of “Blacks don’t live like that!”, “

"This is not an honest portrayal of black family life in America!”  

I remember heated discussions concerning the plausibility of the characters of the show, but I had a nagging sensation all along that the critics were slightly off mark.  I never gave further thought to the matter until that flight from Geneva, Switzerland to NYC  many, many years later when the most obvious and overlooked aspect to the show hit me with the impact of a speeding Max Truck!

When I returned home, I remembered I had a memoir by writer Susan Fales-Hill, who was a writer for the show from its inception (Ms. Fales- Hill  is of black Haitian American and white Anglo Saxon descent) .  She described an incident challenging the credibility of the Cosby family, existence from a colleague:

***“This family isn’t black, they’re Jewish!” This fifty-something executive with bifocals and greying hair exclaimed over my shoulder as  I viewed an episode from the Cosby Show’s first season in the Viacom conference room.  I hardly new this man; he worked on the syndication side of things, and I as a writer’s apprentice.  Yet he stood telling me a virtual stranger, a black stranger, no less,  that the Huxtable had no counterparts in reality.    I sat for a moment speechless and stunned by the double-barreled assault of his arrogance and his ignorance.  I then calmly asked him what he meant, curious to see this self appointed arbiter of American negritude defend his point of view.

“Look at them,” he answered agitated, “she’s a lawyer, he’s a doctor, they live in that… house!”

You know, believe it or not, I have come to agree with the syndication guy!  But before we get to the most obvious issue, let me digress a bit.

If one remembers the Cosby Show, one would remember that the father of the house was an OBGYN who worked from the office of the family’s Brooklyn town house.  His wife, the mother of the house, was a partner in a New York Law firm.  THEY HAD FIVE…count ‘em…FIVE kids.  That’s right!  When on earth would the two of them have had the time to create such as scenario with such high- powered professions and all?.

Of course there is this possibility:   remember the Brady Bunch?  Two divorced people, with three children each who join together as a family of six children, a wife and  a maid;

Umm humm…I hope you’re beginning to see the light.

Which now brings me directly to my point.

Now…look...really look, I say... at the family:

Now take a good look at the chirrrrr rren' (as the colored old folks would say)

First Set of Kids:

Second set of Kids!

Isn' t it obvious that the oldest children are the offspring of  a Caucasian parent?  The question should be, 'whose mullato children deese be?  Da Momma's oh de daddy's?

Perhaps Mr. Syndication was not questioning the house  (almost anybody could live in a brownstone in Brooklyn) as much as he was questioning the entire dynamic of the  Huxtable HOME.

My advice to America.  Wake up and find an optomotrist!!!

***excerpt from ALWAYS WEAR JOY: My Mother Bold and Beautiful, by Susan Fales-Hill