Review of The Boondocks Season 1 Episode 1

This is a short clip of the episode

The Boondocks cartoon television series is a satire that fearlessly criticizes and analyses many issues of race, class, homosexuality and much more. The very first episode is a great look at whiteness and white suburbia in the United States. Huey and Riley Freeman are two young boys who were forced to move into the suburb of Woodcrest by their grandfather, Robert Freeman. After growing up in the inner city of Chicago, Huey and Riley don’t take nicely to all the whiteness around them.

On the rooftop of their new home Huey and Riley look through the scope of a toy gun and begin to point out who white people are from their perspectives, things like white people arrest you and white people have a lot of leisure time. Audrey Kobayashi mentions a lot on systemic whiteness in the university and really society as a whole, and this is portrayed throughout the episode as Huey and Riley are pushed into acting like the whites that they now live around and not to act the way they did in the inner city. They now see all whites around them, the police are white, their teachers are white, the majority of the neighbors are white and so on and due to that they are marginalized.

While the white neighbors of Woodcrest are not overtly racist, the suburb itself is a structure that seeks out complete and pure whiteness. Because whiteness does not necessarily mean white skin, they allow blacks into the community however only one’s that are deemed “civilized”. Throughout the episode it seems as though the Freeman family is being tested in order to become accepted as members of Woodcrest, having the money to own a house there does not seem to be enough. Ed Wunsler’s family founded Woodcrest and he owns the bank that owns the Freeman house, so he feels it necessary to show up and ask a series of questions as he states he only allows certain people in. Again this is an illustration of the white colonial power that exists in contemporary society and in this case is attempting to create the perfect white utopia.

Upon arrival to a garden party the Freeman’s were invited to, Huey comes to realize a cold hard fact. He dreamed of one day telling white people the truth, in which he though would blow their minds and send them into a fury. In his attempt to tell them “Jesus was back, Ronald Reegan’s the devil, and the government is lying about 911” the white people just clap and tell him he’s articulate. It seems that Huey had believed that white people simply didn’t know the truth about anything, but it’s not the case. Because the white upper class power structure has never felt marginalization, only privilege, they have no care in the world. Like Peggy MacIntosh mentions, its not that people don’t know they have more privilege than other, but that they see the “others” as the disadvantaged rather than themselves as the advantaged.