SPOILER ALERT

Black Jesus: Jesus is in Compton trying to encourage peace and economic empowerment in the hood. The way he plans to do this is by starting a community garden with his few faithful followers. Now, instead of eating fried chicken, brothas in the hood are eating salads and feeling better and more energized. Obstacles to this flourishing garden include a wino, a slumlord, a few cholos, and a community of skeptics who believe that Jesus is just a rabble rouser. In short, Aaron McGruder, the creator of The Boondocks, is testing Jesus’ gangster and your ability to take a joke and recognize the deeper social commentary that he offers to disenfranchised communities of color. What he is also doing is exposing white people to black and brown comedians who have been household names for years. Unfortunately, the latter is almost more critical than the former, because proving the success of black comedians so that we can continue to see their faces on television is more important than the art itself.

Black-ish:

Dre (played by Anthony Anderson), his mixed wife (Traci Ellis Ross), his father (Laurence Fishburne), and their four children are living the American dream. He has just been promoted to the Senior Vice President of the Urban Division at the ad agency where he works, his wife is a pediatric surgeon and they are living in an upscale, majority white area of Los Angeles. Because this is suburbia and not Compton, Dre is questioning whether the progress he has made is removing his kids from their roots. Does their love of Juicy Couture, quinoa, field hockey, Pilates, and baked (instead of fried) chicken make them black-ish, instead of black? This is a parody that pokes fun of people who believe that black families like this can’t exist and at the black families whose lives this show reflects.