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BY LAUREN RAMANATHAN

In print | Published October 23, 2008

Ironically enough, I was introduced to “The Boondocks” by a white boy from the suburbs. It’s ironic because no series on TV, let alone an animated series, has taken as many incendiary cracks at the white bourgeois establishment as “The Boondocks.” For that matter, no TV show has taken as many cracks at the black pop culture vanguard. It is this no-holds-barred, equal opportunity critique that makes “The Boondocks” so essential to any young revolutionary’s DVD collection.

When I first saw “The Boondocks,” I was mesmerized by the two protagonists, brothers Huey and Riley Freeman, so disparate in behavior and yet both adorned with that forbidding scowl that comes from being the ‘Other’ in white suburbia. As a young Indo-African chick who grew up in the ’burbs herself, I still aspire to be some combination of Huey, the young Afro-Centric radical whose plans to save the world somehow always fail, and Riley, the admittedly delinquent 8-year-old whose charm and pop culture savvy make up for his numerous character flaws.

There’s also Granddad, the boys’ guardian, who is trying to find love in the autumn years of life; Uncle Ruckus, the self-hating black man; and Tom Dubois, who marries a white woman and has a daughter named Jazmine, much to the consternation of every black woman on the block.
What sets “The Boondocks” apart from other black comedy fare is that it accurately represents the diversity of black existence and how those discourses interact with the majority culture. In episode 8, “The Real,” the racial politics of reality television are on display. Riley, conniving little charmer that he is, convinces Granddad to pretend he’s blind in order to entice “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “Pimp My Ride” to pay the Freemans a visit.

The tokenization and othering of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” is laid bare as Tyler Pennington and crew attempt to install a watermelon patch and a fried chicken dispenser in the Freemans’ home. The Freemans travel back to Chicago in episode 13, “Wingmen,” and Huey discovers that his old friend Cairo has abandoned him for Dewey, an “authentic,” dashiki-wearing, head-wrap-toting, poetry-spewing Afro-Centric radical.

The rivalry between Huey and Dewey is not a mere matter of friendship, but one of identity politics. What does it mean to be a young black man in America? What is authenticity – does it have a specific look? A specific name?

One character that has caused a lot of … well … ruckus on the show is Uncle Ruckus, whose epithet-spouting and white-power-posturing is made even stranger by the fact that he himself is black. The “Uncle Tom” complex has never been funnier or more clearly illustrated than through Ruckus’ invectives. Upon becoming the victim of police brutality, Ruckus actually thanks his attackers for their “thorough” job.

Aaron McGruder, creator of “The Boondocks” (which was initially a serialized comic), has never been afraid to point the finger at his own people. His indictment of black culture is not, however, a monolithic condemnation of African America as “a bunch of lazy Negroes who can’t do anything for themselves,” but rather a general caveat for a generation unwilling and/or unable to do anything about the actual oppression that still exists.

In episode 9, “Return of the King,” Martin Luther King is resurrected, so to speak, only to watch as the people who he “got all those ass-whoopins for” shake their asses in music videos, bust caps for no reason and basically act the damn fool all over the place. This episode, which won a 2006 Peabody Award, also notably provoked the ire of Al Sharpton (I mean … MLK does actually bust out the “N” word himself, y’all).

The series also provoked the wrath of BET, whose bureaucratic machinations to “destroy the minds of Black children” have been McGruder’s ambition to expose since the first comic strip. The battle between McGruder and BET culminated with two episodes from season 2 being banned, including one in which Huey vows to go on a hunger strike until BET is disbanded and the members of the executive board have all committed Japanese-style ritual suicide.

Controversy aside, “The Boondocks” is essentially a narrative of navigation: how do minority cultures navigate majoritarian societies? More importantly, what happens when those minorities fuck the system altogether?

These questions remain as tenuous as ever. With a black man running for president, many feel that the glass ceiling has been broken, but McGruder’s series shows that black people, and people of color in general, have a long way to go before that parity is reached.

Season 3 of “The Boondocks” has yet to materialize. Lucky for us, seasons 1 and 2 are on DVD and the comic strip has been preserved in numerous treasuries (Special note to McCabe: if you do not carry these, get them … NOW!). So sit back and relax. Even if the revolution isn’t televised, at least it’s animated.

Lauren is a sophomore. She can be reached at lramana1@swarthmore.edu.

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