As Theo Huxtable, Malcolm-Jamal Warner had to represent young Black men on the highest-rated show on television while still appealing to middle America, writes Dart Adams. Watching another creative Black young man made me feel like I could also achieve big things,

Over the course of the show’s eight year run, this moment was not always taken as a given; the son, Theo Huxtable, was for years presented as a chronic underachiever, more interested in the typical trappings of teenage boyhood—friends,