No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings. →
On October 18, millions of us are rising again to show the world: America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people.
Twitter today was buzzing about automatic faucet sensors (and, apparently, soap dispensers) not seeing black people, reminding me of previous stories about the Kinect not seeing black people and about HP webcams not seeing black people. Each of these stories (some since reportedly debunked) at the time inevitably reminded me of “Racial Sensitivity”, the fourth episode of season one of the late, great Better Off Ted, about Veridian Dynamics’ new companywide motion detectors.
It remains, I maintain, the greatest racism satire American network television ever produced (which I guess could be a low bar and thus faint praise, but I mean it earnestly) and it was written and aired before any of these other real-world incidents were reported.
The series is streamable on Hulu and buyable on Amazon, but dropped off Netflix some time ago, and you really have to watch this episode to experience just how far they take it.
Referring posts
Originally published to write.house by Bix Frankonis. Comments and replies by email are welcome.