By Jason Dailey. Published on July 26, 2021. Television played an important role in my development as I was growing up in Houston. After school, I sometimes spent hours glued to the TV, watching my favorite shows and absorbing popular commercials. I didn’t know it at the time, but in each TV show or commercial character I looked for reflections of myself or who I hoped to become. As a Black boy in the 1980s, that was hard to find. Then, Black and Brown people, if present at all, typically fell on the periphery, often playing non-threatening, jovial sidekicks to more interesting white leads.