After the show Black-ish comes on ABC, there is a show called Mixed-ish that comes on. Black-ish shows Rainbow, also known as Bow, Johnson when she is grown up and living with her husband Dre, her kids and her mother and father in law. Mixedish goes back to Rainbow’s childhood in the 1980s when she, her parents Alicia and Paul and her siblings navigate life as a mixed race family in the suburbs. In this episode, Paul, Rainbow’s dad, brings Jay, one of his students, home so he can stay with Paul’s family. Rainbow immediately falls in love with Jay and starts imagining them together as a couple, but she keeps her love for him a secret. Meanwhile, Paul and Alicia compete with each other to see who can best mentor Jay. Paul works as a teacher at a school with mostly Black students and wants to help Jay succeed (context: Jay is Black), but Alicia, a lawyer, wants Jay to get into the law field, so she takes him to work with her so he can develop an interest in law. Paul and Alicia argue about who can best help Jay succeed, and while Paul argues that Jay would be more interested in being mentored by a teacher, Alicia argues that she can relate more to Jay because they’re both Black and grew up poor, while Paul can’t relate to him because he is a White guy who grew up in a wealthy family (Santamonica and Johan both point out to her though that her father-in-law, who is White, did help Alicia get a job, so in that sense, she can’t fully relate to Jay, who didn’t ). Paul tells his friends one day about Jay staying with him, and one of his friends, who is Black, asks him what his intention is in trying to help Jay. Paul wonders why his Black friend is asking him why he cares about mentoring Jay so much, so he talks to Alicia and she gives him more context. He tells her he really wants to help his students succeed and he is stuck because he isn’t sure if what he is doing to help Jay is enough. Alicia breaks down the White savior complex for him, explaining that White people have historically helped Black people not out of an intrinsic desire to see them succeed or help them, but as a way of making themselves feel better about the good deed they did, like “Look at me I helped this Black kid out so I’m a good White person.” Paul listens and then they both conclude that both of them are good mentors to Jay just as they are, without butting heads about who is more suited to mentor him.
But as it turns out, neither Alicia nor Paul win the prize for Best Mentor for Jay, because Jay admits to Alicia that he’s not really interested in becoming a lawyer. Jay just appreciates that he got to stay with them. Jay’s departure from the family hits Rainbow hard though, and she continues to have a crush on him long after he has left the family.
One thing I really like about Paul’s character in the show is his allyship when it comes to talking about matters related to race and Blackness. Even as a member of a marginalized community, I can always learn to be a better ally to other marginalized communities, so in part seeing how Paul approached conversations about race showed me how I can be more supportive to my friends in marginalized communities. Even though Paul gets defensive at first when Alicia told him he wouldn’t be as good a mentor as she was, and even when his Black friend made him question what his true intentions were for helping out Jay, he ended up being open to listening to what his wife and his friend were telling him, instead of continuing to get defensive. Paul genuinely cares about Black people, but is stuck about how he can mentor his Black students as a White person who hasn’t gone through the same difficulties they have. When Alicia explains to him the White savior complex, he doesn’t get it at first but is willing to listen to Alicia tell him about it. He doesn’t assume he knows everything about race just because he has three Black kids with his wife. As someone who is trying to be a better ally myself, admitting I don’t know everything but am willing to learn and educate myself more has been a key step in practicing genuine empathy and becoming a more supportive ally to my friends. He admits that he may have approached mentorship in a way that perpetuated a savior complex, and is willing to do better. He accepts her criticism gracefully, and tries to do better, and even when he slips up and Alicia corrects him, he immediately becomes aware of what he is saying and corrects himself. I am trying to be a better ally myself so I went to this website called The Guide to Allyship: The Guide to Allyship
Here is a clip from the episode:
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