On Tuesday, ABC surprised the entire world when it showed that racism really does have consequences in 2018 and canceled its wildly successfulRoseanne reboot after Roseanne Barr went on an Ambien-fueled racist twitter rant against former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett.
When it was on the air, though, it was hailed as the rare TV show that featured a “working class family” in modern-day America. Roseanne Barr is a Trump supporter, and the show aligned itself accordingly, full of racist jokes and uncomfortable storylines. The unspoken phrase here is white working class family, as there are a number of shows that feature working class American families, just minus the racism.
One excellent example is Netflix’s One Day At A Time, a reboot of Norman Lear’s classic sitcom of the same name, with a Cuban-American family at its heart (it also stars Rita freakin’ Moreno.) Following the messy Roseanne fallout, Netflix knew just how to relish in the ongoing Roseanne debacle: spotlight One Day At A Time with a low-key savage tweet that described the show as a "tight-knit, working class family that tackles extremely topical social issues in a smart and innovative way" just in case that's something you're interested in. (You should be, because the show is really great.)
The point is: America today is home to a variety of different kinds of working class families, and they don’t all look and talk like the one featured in the now dead Roseanne reboot.
