Talk:Edith's 50th Birthday/@comment-25052433-20160329165150/@comment-31667626-20170405173940

I remember that well; it really gave insight into Archie, and why he was the way he was. Remember, he didn't actively "hate" anyone, nor did he think he was better than anyone else (stated flat out in the first episode). He just knew that different people were .. different, although the way he saw things was a strange mix of traditional stereotype, and simple blue-collar, street-level interaction ... which makes him now the most hated archetype of the white man next to the guy with the mustache, somehow.

BUT! Contrast him to his erstwhile neighbour, George Jefferson. Jefferson constantly claimed to the "son of a poor sharecropper" who struggled up to become a successful small-business owner. His wife, Louise ("Weezy") called him out on that, in one episode of their own series. It seems that, while the sharecropper did exist, he was several generations further back than George had claimed; his actual father was a succssful small businessman in his own right, who helped George through his business schooling (and probably taught him the out of school practical ropes, too.)

Archie wasn't the brightest man, nor was he the most intelligent and certainly not the best educated, but he saw what he saw, and was what he was, and you took him or left him, either was fine with him ... but George wanted to make him seem something he was not, to make himself seem more ... praiseworthy? Pitiable? '70s magazine black success story cover material? Hmm.