'Sherman's Showcase: Black History Month Spectacular' celebrates Kente cloth and satirizes Pelosi's tokenism
'Sherman's Spectacular' has often been praised for its jokes and sketches that often reflect our current times. The latest episode of 'Sherman's Spectacular' celebrates Black History month. Our dear host Sherman McDaniels (played by Bashir Salahuddin) opens the show by dancing a la 'Soul Train' style while revealing the celebrity lineup that would be appearing on the show. After a disastrous interview with John Legend about Black History, Sherman decides to lighten the atmosphere by introducing fictional singer Sari Charley (played by Zuri Salahuddin).
Sari then begins crooning about everybody's favorite fabric - the Kente cloth. The song has some pretty catchy lyrics encouraging people to add the traditional Ghanian fabric to their daily lives. She asks people to add the kente cloth to jeans, Lamborghini and even encourages KKK members to add it to their outfit. She also wittily remarks how kente is like flannel for blacks. While we couldn't help but enjoy the catchy tune and lyrics, we were also reminded of how kente recently made headlines thanks to Nancy Pelosi, who seems to have taken Sari's suggestion
Earlier in June, when the protests against the death of George Floyd were at their peak, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi alongside several other leaders visited the Capitol Hill, and kneeled down to show their solidarity with the protesters. While Pelosi's gesture was kind and well-meaning, she received intense backlash for draping a kente cloth around her neck. People soon began blasting Pelosi for mocking black culture and her gesture was slammed as mere tokenism.
Although there is no way that the creators of the kente song for the sketch - Phonte Coleman - could have foreseen the incident while composing the song, it just makes it a lot more entertaining, when we take the recent events in context.
'Sherman's showcase: Black History Month Spectacular' was originally set to release in February to co-incide with the Black History month. But the network suggested to push it to June. The showrunners agreed to it, after realizing that the special could be released on Juneteenth to celebrate the black history and culture. But little did they know, how all the sketches and jokes they made on the episode, would be even more relevant to our modern times.