Mayberry, NC: Racist Utopia or Future Sanctuary City?
America's favorite hometown was more woke than you thought.
Everything is racist by modern mainstream standards, including the weather, roads, and any performance not centered around a black person.
Especially old school TV like The Andy Griffith Show.
But I caught up with Sherriff Andy Taylor, Deputy Barney Fife, and the rest of Mayberry during my recent time off.
Like most of us, it wasn’t my first visit to America’s favorite hometown.
However, it was the first time I had watched since I’d taken the red pill.
And it didn’t take long to see that not only was The Andy Griffith Show not racist, but Mayberry often signaled it was on its way to being a regular Portland, Oregon.
There’s Black People in Mayberry?
A popular and incorrect characterization of Andy is that the show included no black people.
But even casual fans know more than one black person called Mayberry home.
Far fewer, for sure, but that’s why they call it a racial minority, I think.
Still, most black Mayberriens played background roles, and the series only included one black-speaking role between 1960 and 1968.
Although critics of the show acknowledge the existence of blacks, they fault producers for not doing enough to stand up for social issues.
While the cars in Mayberry reflect the modern day, the actors said the program had a 1930s feel.
Either way, Mayberry, North Carolina, likely had segregation laws on the books, allowing law enforcement to arrest any black person for being black on a Friday night.
Yet of all the drunks and criminals that Andy, Barney, or the state troopers drug into a cell over 249 episodes, none of them were black.
If Griffith and the producers wanted to portray a “racial utopia” where white viewers could remember “the good old days,” why include any blacks?
Why not make the local criminals and drunks black?
Although there was only one black-speaking role, the situation portrayed was progressive for the time:
On March 13th, 1967, actor Rockne Tarkington appeared in Opie’s Piano Lesson as “Flip Conroy,” Opie’s football coach.
The dilemma is that Opie wants to play football and learn to play piano simultaneously.
To discuss the situation with the sheriff, Coach Conroy visits the Griffith residence, shakes Andy’s hand, and enters his home. Yes, through the front door.
Andy says that to be good at either, he will only do well if he focuses on one activity, but Conroy counters by saying both can be practiced with proper time management.
Then, the visitor walks over to the living room piano and expertly plays a tune for the Griffith family.
In other words, a black man, who is tasked with being responsible for white kids, walks into the white sheriff's house and tells him how to raise his son in front of his family, then plays an instrument culturally associated with the upper class as a white boy beams at the black man.
That would make any white supremacist’s head explode.
White Liberals of Mayberry
Social issues weren’t completely ignored in Mayberry.
In a 1962 episode, “Ellie Walker,” a central cast member playing Andy’s romantic interest, runs for city council.
While Andy and other men try to dissuade Ellie’s political interests by arguing women don’t need to worry about such business, he relents in the end.
After addressing the townspeople, the defeated sheriff finally declares that Ellie or any other woman has just as much of a right to run for office as any man.
And the show passively respected women as they did blacks, as all the criminals I saw were white men, such as Gomer Pyle or Otis Campbell.
Also, any non-criminal buffoonery was conducted almost exclusively by white males.
Like America, Mayberry is Complicated
Although Mayberry was fictional, it was modeled after Andy Griffiths's hometown, Mount Airy, North Carolina, portraying the positive side of Griffith’s upbringing through the weekly lessons from one of the top ten greatest shows.
Still, Mount Airy is said to have been named after a nearby plantation, so it stands to reason that Mayberry may not have been so progressive in the past.
But how does Mayberry contrast with reality?
While Mount Airy's ancestors might have owned slaves, there wasn’t enough white privilege to go around as Griffith grew up poor, sleeping in a dresser drawer as a baby.
And the actor never made any indication he was racist off-camera, as he would go on to become a lifelong Democrat and Obama supporter.
Things weren’t great for Don Knotts, who played Barney, growing up in an abusive household in West Virginia where his dad once held a knife to his throat and threatened to kill him.
He was often sick and malnourished as a child, giving him a thin stature for the rest of his life.
Today, the Mount Airy voting map is mainly red and home to about 10.5K, with whites making up 82.2% of the population and 11.4% black.
Yet the current mayor is non-partisan, and a black man took Barney’s job, apparently.
The Mayberry cast might also be surprised to find a pride flag draped on the local church of their counterpart town, led by a female:
Of course, not all “Mayberriens” agree with the leftist representation, as someone stole the flag. Twice.
Here’s a black reporter covering the story.
But whether talking about fact or fiction, The Andy Griffith Show's purpose was to entertain and allow people to escape reality.
Not to resolve the world’s problems.
The show aired when the world was speeding up, and people longed for a time that had passed.
Perhaps Andy Griffith and others wished they had done more to address race relations to include more black-speaking roles.
Still, they didn’t promote stereotypes or ignore black people’s existence, either.
It’s possible to reminisce on days when community meant something while also criticizing slavery, segregation, and overall unfair treatment.
We’ll have to talk about racist roads and weather another time, but Andy Griffith, its creators, and eight years of content never did anything to suggest they were racist.
Because whether you visit Mayberry or Mount Airy, you’re more likely to find a liberal than white men in bedsheets.
Well, do a good day's work and act like somebody. -Andy Griffith