Keeping the faith | Even in Mayberry, you have to wonder: Whose land is this land?

I experienced a weird realization recently.

I do not watch cable “news” anymore and tend to watch documentaries or television shows and movies.

I was flipping through the channel lineup and stopped at the station that was playing “The Andy Griffith Show.” As a child, I loved that show, partly because there was a little boy, Opie, who was played by a child television star; there was a goofy deputy sheriff, Barney, who never did anything right; there was Aunt Bee, who was always there with love and food; and, of course, Andy, who was the wise, compassionate sheriff in a Southern town they called Mayberry.

I didn’t pay attention to the locale of this show. I absorbed the good vibes it gave me and that was that.

But recently I realized something: In that town, little Black children – or Black people, period – would not have been welcome or, if they were, would have been under an obligation to “stay in their place.” Their lives would have been vastly different.

Filmed in the '60s and evocative of an even earlier time, it is probably safe to say that a fair amount of violence would have been endured by the Black population, including some murders of Black people simply "because" by whites, who likely would have been acquitted of charges, if in fact charges were made.

That revelation stopped me mid-thought, and I asked myself, “Whose land is this, anyway?”

We as Black people bought into the images we saw on television as we grew up. The message then was clear: This land was the land of white people. It was up to us to fit in where we could get in.

It was as though Black life did not exist. We were absent from television screens almost completely, save for "The Amos 'n Andy Show." Later, that changed, but when I was a child, there was precious little on television that reflected Black life, thought and even humor.

Some might say I am overreaching, that not seeing Black life on television was no big deal. But it was a huge deal.

Black children grew up not only not understanding the very real issues we would face in life because of the color of our skin, but we also grew up believing that we were just like the characters we saw, and, therefore, that what they had and received and expected was what we could have, receive, and expect as well.

It was not only the absence of Black people that helped shape the way people thought, it was the images of women as well. The stay-at-home mom was the idyllic norm.

My mother worked, and so she did not fit that image. I remember asking her why she didn’t wear a dress and wear pearls and aprons like the television mothers. “One day,” she said, “you will realize that what you see on television is not real life.”

Be that as it may, when the realization hit me that Andy Griffith and his community may very well have been hostile to any Black person who lived in their town, I got sad. America has been very good about shaping how we – all of us – think, and likewise, very good at hiding our racism and sexism.

For those who cry out, “Make America great again!” I suppose Andy Griffith’s town is about as paradigmatic of Americanism as it gets. For them, America is the land of white people, for white people.

I am not sure I am expressing this “aha!” moment adequately, but I switched from that channel where little Opie was talking to his Pa about something, and know I will never watch another of the Andy Griffith reruns again.

This land was made what it is by the blood, sweat, and tears of non-white people, but the stories that helped shape our image of our country made it an artform to eliminate the ugly, painful and truthful parts of our history. Mayberry was white America, and that, by definition, excluded many who latched onto the story the show was created to tell.

The Rev. Susan K. Smith is the founder of Crazy Faith Ministries in Columbus and director of clergy and leadership development for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc.

Keeping the Faith is a column featuring the perspectives of a variety of faith leaders from the Columbus area.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Column: Even in Mayberry, you have to wonder: Whose land is this land?