Modern Family is great. It is hilarious, poignant, and fairly inclusive. Yet they are seven seasons in and have yet to have even a reoccurring black character. The entire premise of Modern Family is that most American families are no longer nuclear or mono-racial. We see that, the white patriarch is on wife number two who is South American, and has an adopted Asian granddaughter. But no matter who any of the children or grandchildren date or regularly interact with, they are not black. Why?
Is it a class thing, that black people can not be part of the upper middle class that the Pritchett-Dunphy-Delgado-Tuckers live in? Or is it just an oversight?
Haley could date a black dude. It would be insanely adorable to see Haley with a nerdy Jordan Carlos type that made both Dylan and Andy jealous.
Claire could get wine-drunk with a new black PTA mom. Kerry Washington, Gabrielle Union, Maya Rudolph are all so hilarious.
Manny or Luke could a crush on a black girl. I can picture Manny exchanging poetry with a too-cool-for-school artiste, maybe Zendaya in a beret.
There are so many possibilities, but somehow the writers have not gotten there yet. A few seasons back, there was an article published that criticized Modern Family for claiming modernity when each of the families had a stay-at-home parent, which does not really happen anymore. Take a look at season 7; that is no longer the case. Modern Family is capable of moving with the times and we no longer live in a time where black people are not seen or heard from.
Modern Family is magnificent television, and I am not going to stop watching. But they are not being true to their own concept, and seven seasons is plenty of time to have fixed that. Plus, it would be nice to have one of my favorite shows have a character or two that looked like me.
