The Gift Of Hunger Analysis

The episode of Black-ish that we were assigned titled, “The Gift of Hunger” was quite comical, but there was a deeper meaning behind all of the humor. In this episode, Dre, the father of the family, was attempting to make his kids, Zoey, Andre, Diane and Jack more grateful for all of the luxuries in their lives. The parents of this family, Dre and Rainbow, are both very successful in their careers. Because of this, they “spoil” their kids to a certain extent. Dre was not aware of how little he makes his kids work for what they want, that was, until he brought them to the Beef Plantation for dinner and they hated it. The Beef Plantation is a steakhouse that Dre and his family used to go to for very, special occasions; however, his family does not
Janine immediately assumed that the Johnson family was struggling to feed their kids, so she made a “pity casserole” and brought it over to their house and stated, “…this would be a lot of house for anybody”, as if the Johnson’s were struggling to pay their mortgage, which led to them not being able to feed their family. Janine once again made an assumption like this when the two youngest kids were having a lemonade stand. The kids ran off and Rainbow, their mother, was left standing alone at the stand when Janine walked by. Instead of thinking nothing of this, Janine concluded that Rainbow was selling lemonade herself to make money, as if she was not a doctor, was having financial issues, and needed to turn to a lemonade stand to make money. Janine then suggested that Rainbow should visit her church because they can get free food there, like a homeless shelter. Janine’s assumptions about Rainbow and the Johnson family’s social status definitely seem like they were based off of race, and I doubt that she would have made such presumptions if the Johnson family had been