We don't typically remember "Father Knows Best" as a "social issues" sitcom but that makes this episode stand out all the more. I only saw it once in syndication in the 70s but it sticks in my mind. This must have been a tough episode to write, to show the prejudice that even ostensibly decent people harbor in themselves.
The local civic boosters decide to pick a typical citizen out of the phone book for some public event and then they are horrified when the man they pick is... the local Hispanic gardener! For some reason they ask leading citizen Jim Anderson to discreetly shove him aside so they can pick someone else, but Jim won't have it. Never explicitly saying they don't want a Mexican, they dance around it with a dozen politely-worded objections and Anderson keeps turning it back on them. Everything positive virtue they say a citizen needs to embody, Jim explains how their chosen man is a fine example of it.
The gardener is really a McGuffin to facilitate this examination of White discomfort with "otherness".
On the down side, the gardener character is still pretty much the standard TV Mexican stereotype. Heavily accented, obsequious, cheerful, and always ready to defer to his social superiors.
But I give the writers credit for finding a way to put this story out there. Not too much credit; it would have been interesting to have many more episodes of this sort. Maybe that's what they thought they were doing every week?
The local civic boosters decide to pick a typical citizen out of the phone book for some public event and then they are horrified when the man they pick is... the local Hispanic gardener! For some reason they ask leading citizen Jim Anderson to discreetly shove him aside so they can pick someone else, but Jim won't have it. Never explicitly saying they don't want a Mexican, they dance around it with a dozen politely-worded objections and Anderson keeps turning it back on them. Everything positive virtue they say a citizen needs to embody, Jim explains how their chosen man is a fine example of it.
The gardener is really a McGuffin to facilitate this examination of White discomfort with "otherness".
On the down side, the gardener character is still pretty much the standard TV Mexican stereotype. Heavily accented, obsequious, cheerful, and always ready to defer to his social superiors.
But I give the writers credit for finding a way to put this story out there. Not too much credit; it would have been interesting to have many more episodes of this sort. Maybe that's what they thought they were doing every week?