I grew up feeling like an alien, drawing eyeballs and intrigue. It was attention that helped make me the confident person I am today, but it also created a lot of internal pressure.
Coming of age in New York, at a prep school known as the alma mater of Jackie Kennedy, I did not fit into any box. My father was not in finance; he was in media. I was Black, but my parents were immigrants with a penchant for Tiger-parenting. I lived on the Upper East Side, where my family was the only one of color in our doorman building, but it was not on Fifth or Park avenues. We have long had a weekend home, but it is in Connecticut—not Greenwich—and not the Hamptons.
There were certain “Black bougie” archetypes from pop culture that people could draw on to try to categorize me, but none of those fit either. I was not ditzy or spoiled with a valley girl accent, like Hilary Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I had none of the bohemian chill of Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet) from The Cosby Show. My mother did not resemble Diahann Carroll of Dynasty; she had no penchant for fine jewels, nor putting her nose in the air. Our money was new, but our work ethic and obsession with higher education was old.
Jasmine Guy as Whitley Gilbert in A Different World.
Guy with Kadeem Hardison as Dwayne Wayne.
Which is why I’m filled with immense gratitude that this month a reboot of A Different Worldwill premiere on Netflix. When the original premiered in 1987, it followed Denise Huxtable as she went off to the fictional Hillman College, an HBCU, following her father’s legacy. There, she was thrust into a melting pot of Black students from every walk of life, which in turn introduced audiences to a wide range of characters, including Whitley Gilbert (Jasmine Guy). Whitley was nothing like Denise. She traded hipster textiles and dreadlocks for Chanel-esque suits and perfectly coiffed hair. She had a Southern accent and mirrored a modern, Black Scarlett O’Hara. She was privileged. She was an enigma to her peers on campus. I felt seen watching reruns, even though we had very little in common. It was her foreign-ness that made sense to me. She didn’t fit in any boxes. Neither did I.
In the new series, the protagonist is Deborah Wayne (Maleah Joi Moon), the daughter of Whitley and her husband Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison). We watch Deborah navigate college in 2026, still trying to find her own footing outside her parents’ high-achieving shadow. Somewhere in her, I recognize the same restlessness I felt growing up between worlds that never quite claimed me.
I always found myself “representing” an entire faction of Black society purely by existing, educating my peers, with every step I took, about what a Black person with “range” looked like.
But in the summers, when my family went to Martha’s Vineyard since I was a little kid, I was not alone. Black children and families of truly every shade would flock to the island in August. We would compare notes, with no words needed, on the past year in our homogenous schools and neighborhoods where we were the “only ones like us.”
Strangely, these days, I find my inner voice full of contradictions about progressive statements like “visibility matters.” As DEI has been rendered a dirty expletive by the far right, I sometimes wonder if I miss the hush-hush days on Martha’s Vineyard, before the Obamas descended on the island, before all the articles shining a light on the fact that we were there, minding our own business, creating community quietly in our own oasis.
Even as a contributing editor to this publication, I have to admit I was a bit terrified reading T&C‘s recent coverage of Jack and Jill, the elite social organization founded in 1938 for Black children and families, which I belonged to growing up. It meant that something felt over-exposed, something vulnerable to attack. If no one is paying attention to you, you’re not a threat. You’re safe. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
I sometimes forget that my favorite show growing up, The Cosby Show, was a revelation at the time to those who did not know there were Black doctors and lawyers cohabitating in Brooklyn brownstones filled with fine art, pianos, and several children. When A Different World debuted in 1987, concurrent with the last era of The Cosby Show, it broke through as a more modern narrative set on a college campus that put an at-times uncomfortable spotlight on a version of “excellence” in the eyes of the Black bourgeoisie.
In my childhood imagination, I envisioned my experiences on the Vineyard being similar to what students were immersed in at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. I fantasized about campuses full of Black people from all walks of life. Some hailed from immigrants, some with deep American roots, some old money, some bougie, some aspirational from the hood—and everything in between. A Different Worldvalidated that theory.
As Susan Fales-Hill, the original series’ executive producer and head writer, T&C contributing editor, and my “adult godmother,” said in a 2021 retrospective of A Different World: “…no one had seen that range of Black people—of every walk, of every socioeconomic background, of every complexion. We’re always being told what we are and what we’re allowed to be, and on A Different World, we just were.”
The original A Different World was, at times, controversial: it covered the AIDS crisis, the L.A. riots, date rape, and other uncomfortable topics. The reboot similarly tackles modern themes from a Gen Z and Gen Alpha point of view. The overarching plotline traces declining HBCU funding amid DEI pressure from today’s socio-political climate. Mental health is front and center. Social media is a constant motif. Most students on campus are aspiring entrepreneurs, as the new generation is wont to be. Queer characters live openly. Deborah engages with students from different socioeconomic realities, like Rashida (Alijah Kai), a first-generation college student, unlike her. Dwayne and Whitley, meanwhile, grapple with being newfound empty nesters in their marriage.
These topics are both uniquely Black and entirely universal to the human experience. And they are bonding for anyone who watches. It’s refreshing and beautiful to witness. It made me realize I’m an old fuddy-duddy, much like the elders who watched the original A Different Worldmust have felt when it debuted in the ’80s.
Just as there are varying iterations of white characters on TV, there must be as many as possible of Black ones, particularly women. Not just Hilary Banks, not just Whitley, not just Denise. Like our white peers, we too struggle with how to grapple with the new generation. There must be room for a refreshed version of what being Black and privileged in America looks like, with as many iterations as possible—no matter how it makes us elder statesmen feel.
