Archie Bunker played by actor Carroll O’Connor  (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)

We broke ground but we didn’t erect a building. It takes a long time for social justice to permeate every human soul. We still have a lot of the Archie Bunker problem, and the big change I expected the show would help promote never happened. We’re still working on it…

from an interview with Sally Struthers who played the role of Gloria on the TV sitcom “All in the Family” 

Mike: That’s what’s wrong with this country. Nobody asks questions anymore.

Archie: Can I ask you a question?

Mike: Sure.Archie: Why don’t you shut up?

This may be hard to believe, but the first episode of Norman Lear’s Emmy Award winning “All in the Family” aired on January 12, 1971 which is now fifty years ago. Growing up as a teenager in the 1970s this show served as my basic orientation to the social issues of the day and the first time I’d heard of Queens, New York.

I was aware at the time that it was a controversial show airing issues that were not usually addressed on a TV sitcom, but the main characters were so entertaining it was hard to ignore.

I remember the episode where Edith is arrested for shoplifting when she absent-mindedly takes a wig from a department store and she’s afraid she is a kleptomaniac. (Just to double-check it turns out to be season 3, episode 6) I had never heard of the word and had no idea what they were talking about until I watched the episode. And the show did not shy away from political incorrectness. I heard language for the first time I had never head anywhere else before. Lear later admitted that although his use of satire was sometimes missed by the audience it was important to says these things out loud in a public forum. 

I vividly remember the comic image of Archie and his son-in-law Michael Stivic getting stuck in the doorway when the two of them would try to go through it at the exact same time. Neither one of them would back-off. They would push and shove until they both made it into the next room exhausted and out of breath. I think that image captures the tension and struggle between the two characters, ideologies and generations. Our nation was also in a tense social-political struggle at the time and the show reflected the signs of the times.  

Looking back now (with a little historical perspective) when I first encountered the history of the civil rights movement in my high school social studies class those events had occurred less than ten years before. Since I was watching it in black and white news reel films and studying it in a textbook I (mistakenly) assumed the civil rights movement was over and the issues had been resolved. I thought “All in the Family” was just doing some mop-up duty and then we would all move along as a culture to the next pressing issues facing us.

Well, I was wrong. If the last four years have proved anything, it’s proved we still have plenty of work to advance around race, prejudice and systemic injustice. As a nation, part of our vision is finding a way to come together as a family, dysfunctional and diverse perhaps, but a family of shared loyalties and commitment. We are all in this together. 

Still in the woods,
Dave

January 21, 2021
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