Jewish World Review March 20, 2000/ 13 Adar II, 5760

Elliot B. Gertel

When Black Archie Bunkers 'diss' the 'Jewish doctors'

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- TV'S NEWEST HOSPITAL SERIES, City of Angels, (CBS), is unique in that it depicts a health center run by African-American professionals where white doctors are in the minority. So far, the series has been quite good at providing impressive black role models. Yet a recent episode, while purporting to offer a variation on the Archie Bunker theme, actually raised some gut issues about group preservation in a manner that could be construed as a parody of any "chosen people" concept.

Writers Nicholas Wootton and Paris Barclay have young Jewish intern Jeffrey Weiss invite himself to meet the father of his girlfriend, Grace Patterson. The latter is worried about such a meeting. Grace says her dad is angry at whites because her mother, who was white and wealthy and headstrong, rebelled against her parents through an affair with a black man, and then left him and their child to return to her privileged home. Jeffrey is confident that he can win Grace's dad over.

Though Grace's black stepmother is most gracious and refined, the father's animosity renders the dinner a feast of tension. Still, Jeff imprudently flaunts his self-assurance when he tells Grace's dad, "I want you to know that I have very real feelings for Grace, and I think that if you just gave me the chance to show you that I'm a decent human being, you won't be disappointed."

Grace's father is not impressed with Jeff's humanist manifesto. "I'm sure you're a decent young man," he responds. "I don't think my daughter would have brought you home if you weren't. That's not the issue. The issue is [that] I don't want my little girl climbing between the sheets of a nice Jewish doctor who thinks he can get over on me just because he believes he's every girl's daddy's dream come true. Because you're not this daddy's dream come true. I can tell you that."

Jeffrey does not see this as an anti-Jewish diatribe. "Shame on me for thinking you wouldn't hate me just for being white," he says. Grace's father retorts, "I don't hate you, son. I don't even know you. I just don't want you in my tree. I don't want a white son-in-law. I don't want white grandkids. I will not approve of my bloodline disappearing in the great white river after two more generations."

That is all that we learn about dad's worldview and about Jeffrey's reaction to it. But what is being said here? The writers do not seem to care. Dad can sound off very specifically about "Jewish doctors" and their "attitude" and not even be suspected of anti-Semitism by the Jewish doctor listening to him. Is this because the latter is cocksure of his own desirability? Or do the writers believe that statements about "Jewish" doctors should be regarded as referring only to doctors-in-general? Then why make Jeffrey Jewish?

Since Jeffrey is Jewish, a certain irony enters the dialogue which would not be present otherwise. Grace's dad sounds very much like some Jews when they chasten their children for dating Gentiles. Often, these parents use a similar "blood-line" argument. But the Jewish concern, at least in the classical tradition, is not about pigmentation but about a unique covenant with G-d which future generations are mandated to uphold. An episode of a Pax's series, It's A Miracle, related, at about the same time, the true story of an African-American woman who interviewed an Orthodox Jewish woman in her role as reporter and was so moved by the experience that she later converted to Judaism. At a Sabbath dinner in an Orthodox synagogue in another city she met a young man and in a short time they were contemplating marriage. She discovered that he was the son of the woman who had inspired her to explore Judaism. They married, had children, and are now cherished members of an Orthodox community.

Now matters of race are complex regardless of the official teachings of religions. The psychologies of individuals and of communities factor powerfully into all human relationships. But this episode of City of Angels exploits rather than investigates the theme of race and religion, particularly as regards Black-Jewish relations.

There is a none-too-veiled amusement in having a black father mouth about blackness what a Jewish father or mother might say about Jewishness, and a discernable relish on the part of the writers in branding the father as a bigot-in-reverse or at least a soft-spoken advocate of a black separatism which is put on a par with Jewish separatism by virtue of the young doctor being singled out as Jewish.

Or do the writers attribute all "separatisms" to insults by majority groups as an unsympathetic remark to Jeffrey, by a black intern being bullied by a white doctors, suggests?

Some of these impressions left by City of Angeles may be due to the confinement of the Grace, Jeff and Grace's dad saga to a brief dinner segment. Perhaps we can expect a more thoughtful exploration of the Black-Jewish theme, not to mention race and religion, in future episodes. One wishes, however, that the writers were more committed, creatively and conceptually, to crafting each hour so that the mere identification of characters and ethnic or religious background does not imply cross-cultural one-upmanship.

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