Growing up I always associated Sunday, the beans-franks-n-cottage-cheese dinners we had, NFL games on TV, and the military recruiting ads on them - “Be All That You Can Be”, the Marine fighting the balrog, etc.

Thinking back made the connection that those United Negro College Fund (”because a mind… is a terrible thing to waste”), Fresh Air Fund, Big Brothers/Big Sisters ads in the 80s/early 90s were “now that you’re in a good mood seeing a bunch of (college graduate!) Negroes as ‘your team’, maybe help them out of the ‘urban crisis’ ghetto?”

My aunt took in a Fresh Air Fund kid in the summers, a program to get black youth out of the purposeless urban school break into the country (LA’s overcrowded “tracks” year-round schooling similarly prevented all ghetto youth from being unoccupied at once)

In his 20s he went to prison for a while, then later he showed up to family events quite charming, after all the “dindu nuffin” meme is based on the fact that even urban black criminals challenging the law and social order are experienced as pleasant and prosocial by their families