All American is a very popular TV show based on the true story of Spencer Paysinger (Spencer James in the show), a star African American football player from Crenshaw who gets recruited to go play at Beverly Hills because of his talent. He moves in with Billy Baker, the coach at Beverly, and the rest of his family. He goes through many different changes throughout the show and faces a number of injustices, as do some of the other characters. For example, there is a scene in episode 3 where Jordan (Billy’s son) and Spencer are in Crenshaw, and get pulled over. Jordan immediately began questioning the cops and saying that he didn’t do anything wrong. The cop forced him to get out of the car, then he handcuffed him and threw him on the ground. Spencer kept telling Jordan to do what the cop said, but Jordan was not listening. Eventually, they made Spencer get out of the car too. Jordan looked very scared and didn’t seem to understand what was going on, but Spencer tells him, “just keep looking at me.” This is because he is from a rich family in Beverly Hills, so he has never had to experience the injustice that Spencer has had to go through while living in Crenshaw. These cops were obviously “othering” Jordan and Spencer for their skin color, and this scene just goes to show how different Jordan and Spencer’s childhoods were, even though they are both African American.
After moving to Beverly Hills, many people from Crenshaw were not too pleased, and thought that he was trying to get out of their corrupt community. However, Spencer was always attempting to make a difference in Crenshaw’s community, which just adds more to his character. He always saw Crenshaw as his home and never strayed from that. He even returns to Crenshaw in season 3 for his senior year. Overall, this show does an amazing job at depicting a number of injustices throughout the show, and this scene was just one of the many.