The "Barbed" Wire

Illicit drugs running rampant. Crime and violence out of control. Families torn apart. Whole communities scarred by the drug trade and the criminals who profit from its prevalence. 

Pretty typical narrative in America today, isn’t it? But if you read that first paragraph again and imagine the landscape it portrays, do we all not go immediately to inner-city Chicago or Detroit? And don’t we all envision the actors in this tragedy to be black and brown-skinned?

But we are wrong. This is the scene in Appalachia, and rural Mississippi, and the suburbs around Sacramento and the farm towns of Nebraska. This is the heartland in America today. Sarah Palin’s “Real America.” And the actors are mostly white, mostly economically disadvantaged, poorly educated people who long for the days when the farms and the factories and the mills and the plants were humming.

When hearing about the opioid problem in the nation today, I am always reminded of that great Richard Pryor line from decades ago: “The drug problem today is an epidemic. That means white people have it!”

If we were honest with ourselves – if Hollywood were honest with itself – the next wave of great TV shows would all feature stories about the opioid crisis in rural America. They would tell the tale of woe and drama of how white people in the heartland failed themselves and their communities and became a wasteland of drug-addled schemers. Instead of burnout city blocks and urban decay, the tracking shots would be of abandoned grain silos, rusted combines and meth dealers cooking their product in ramshackle trailers.

That is where the great drug crisis – and great drama – of the 21^st century America exists.

Instead of a black drug kingpin rolling through the streets of Watts or Oakland in a slick Cadillac Escalade with a glove box full of crack, we open with a white dude in a souped-up Ford F-150 splashing along a muddy two-track, checking in on his mules distributing Oxycontin to high schoolers.

Instead of the counter narrative of the one good black kid who is using his basketball prowess to escape the mean streets, we hone in on the white kid who is tops in his wrestling weight class fighting the good fight to get a scholarship and help his meth-addicted mother.

“Making America Great Again,” in part means returning to the era when they drug problem was confined to the urban core.

The narrative of how the “bad dudes” and weak-minded minorities destroying themselves and their communities is so easy today to transport to the “bad hicks” and weak-minded white trash who are destroying themselves and their communities.

In this dramatic series, would it be the ultimate irony to showcase a lead character who is a gruff, but big-hearted black sheriff chasing down the hillbilly drug dealers, but also helping the poor white kids say no to the drug trade?