My response article refers directly to the essay “Welcome to the City” by Murray Forman, in particular the complex relationship that the ghetto has with its inhabitants and with strangers. In the essay, Forman states, “Youth continues to be pitted against middle-class American ideals of a liberated consumer culture” (47). Since our course focuses on black popular culture, I thought it would be interesting to examine the representation of the domestic space occupied by black families in television sitcoms, a genre strongly defined by the shows of the 1950s. Furthermore, Forman specifically mentions Chicago's Cabrini Green housing projects as an example of urban housing development, and this seems like an invitation to analyze episodes of Good Times. Understanding the ghetto as a real and imagined place must be contextualized within the broader concept of homeownership and the American dream. Television and the real estate boom are both products of postwar American prosperity. Both developments are connected not only temporally, but also culturally. Their meaning is often interdependent. The introduction of network television programming into American homes began in the late 1940s, as did the postwar housing boom and baby boom. The suburbs became the new melting pot as migration from working-class ethnic neighborhoods created white enclaves. At the same time, families on television reflected this change in social hierarchy. The families of early television sitcoms were happy and secure, with a professional father, a loving and caring mother, and two or three well-adjusted children. And they were always white and money was never an issue. The suburban home was an oasis of domesticity, free from communism and the atomic threat. The house... a medium of paper... based solely on the setting of each family's home. Of course, that difference in setting speaks to race and class, but those issues aren't examined further in any of the sitcoms. Where a family lives depends on the type of life they lead; their level of education, their economic prosperity, their happiness and quality of life. Of course, the same could be theorized for rich white families and poor white families, but the complication of racism and its perpetuation is eliminated if one makes that argument. White homogeneity was part of the attraction in selling the American dream to potential residents. Good Times demonstrates that life in the ghetto is tolerable by “blacks,” who are simply better suited to hardship; while The Cosby Show is an example of an exceptional black family with family situations similar to those of white families.