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Actor Jaleel White is out promoting his book entitled Growing Up Urkel, but he’s getting some backlash.
White spoke with the Wilmington Library for his new book and talked about Family Matters getting left out of the conversation when people discuss the best Black television shows of all time.
“Being a part of the ‘TGIF’ brand sometimes makes you feel like you don’t belong in the pantheon of blackness,” he said. “Blackness has been treated as a very monolithic experience in entertainment. ‘If it’s not a hood story, it’s not a Black story.’ And you know, sometimes I feel left out of that.”
White admits that several other Black shows like Living Single and Martin are often ranked higher, but he knows they’ve got it locked when it comes to shows purely about family.
Jaleel White on feeling left out in the legacy of Black entertainment, saying, “If it’s not a hood story, it’s not a Black story,” and speaks on Family Matters always ranking last on polls for favorite Black shows, underneath Martin and Living Single.
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“If there’s ever a poll, and they say what are your favorite Black shows? Martin is in there, Living Single… I already know we’re coming in last,” he laughed. “But if there’s ever a poll and it’s just your favorite family shows, suddenly we rank really high. So it’s kind of interesting in how we look at ourselves even as Black folks.”
White famously portrayed Steven Quincy Urkel on Family Matters, which first aired back in 1989 and ended its run after an impressive 215 episodes, in which he became the poster child for Black nerds. However, that archetype also didn’t sit right with him.
“Somehow I became a symbol of Black male nerd culture, I know this for a fact. Any brother that grew up in the ’90s and 2000s, he was told that he looked like me,” he said. “He was called Urkel and he didn’t look anything like me, guaranteed. But still, his peers would find a way to call him Urkel. So it’s really humbling to see how far nerd culture has come. And really it’s not nerd culture, it’s smart culture, it’s hobbyist culture, it’s skateboarders… I could never have known in a million years that I could be the face of that.”
See how social media is reacting to White’s opinion below.