“All American” is a newer TV show on Netflix with the first season premiering in 2018. The main character Spenser James is a black male from Crenshaw, Los Angeles a community lost to gangs and crime. In the first episode, Spenser gets recruited to go to Beverly Hills High School to play football for them. As anyone could imagine the transition was rough. Beverly Hills is a very different place for someone that grew up in a place like Crenshaw. This show tackles the ideas of injustice within not only Crenshaw, but the discrimination Spencer faced in a predominantly white community of Beverly Hills. There is one particular scene that will always stick with me from the show. The Baker family had taken Spenser in and was living with them during the week so he was closer to school. The son of the family, Jordan Baker, and Spenser were driving home from I believe Crenshaw. The two of them get pulled over by two white police men when driving Jordan’s nice expensive car. Jordan is part African American and the two police officers had pulled them over for no reason. Jordan had never been in a situation like this because he was from Beverly so he was questioning why they had been pulled over and not really listening to the cops. Spencer on the other had knew exactly what was going on and was trying to tell Jordan to comply with the officers. The officers eventually shoved the boys to the ground and handcuffed them. Of course having never experienced something like this, Jordan was traumatized, not that it wasn’t traumatizing for Spencer, he was just used to it.
Even though this show is fiction and the main plot of the movie is Spencer’s football career, they tough on real life injustices of people living in poorer communities like Crenshaw. Multiple times throughout the series characters will say that Spencer has a once in a life time chance to get out and make something of himself, an opportunity a lot of people from communities like that don’t get. On another note Spencer was proud of his community. He continually was trying to make it better and reduce violence and give his younger brother a better place to grow up in.