Black Men: We All Need To Get On Da Gild
I’mma need y’all to trust ya boy here.
I am a grown-ass man. A Morehouse man. A man who knows where things in Home Depot are and can explain the relative pros and cons of any wall anchor. I am a product of the city that brought you Allen Iverson and Michael Vick, and I know how to order food from a carry-out. I have at least four different exotic daps in my arsenal, and my algorithm thinks I only care about sports, politics, and barbecue videos.
And yet, every Sunday night, without fail, I’ve been on my couch with a glass of something brown, watching HBO’s The Gilded Age like it’s the NBA Finals.
No, I don’t watch it “ironically.” No, it’s not “my lady’s show” that I just happen to sit through. This is my show. I watch it alone and enthusiastically. I am all in on the late-19th-century real estate beefs, opera box tiffs, them hats that require their own zip codes, and the petty slights of society surrounding who gets an invitation to the ball.
It’s a show that is, ostensibly, about the interplay of wealth, status, and power in late-19th-century New York. But, in reality, it’s storytelling that’s found a way to extract intrigue from the banal. From one week to the next, we’re exposed to the exhausting expectations of place, gender, and race in ways that seem quaint now, but were definitive and confining then.
Honestly, it’s a show that is more minor interpersonal narratives than any sweeping drama. So, you’re not watching because of its relative intensity. You’re watching because you’re nosey.
But more than anything, I’m here for Arthur Scott, Peggy Scott’s father. Because grown-ass Black men, Arthur Scott is one of us.
Now, for the uninitiated: Arthur Scott sells drugs in Brooklyn in the ’80s.
Okay, let me clarify. Mr. Scott is a pharmacist in 1880s Brooklyn, but the Shawn Carter parallel kinda works. Born enslaved, he hustled his way into one of the most respected professions available to Black men of his era. In a world that was hostile by design, he built something lasting, not just for himself, but for his family and community.
If you’re a Black man over 40, tell me you don’t recognize that arc.
Some of us started with nothing. Maybe not literal chains, but the economic ones of redlining, underfunded schools, and neighborhoods treated like containment zones. We came of age dodging police harassment and navigating the kind of “twice as hard for half as much” pressure that made every choice feel like a potential life sentence.
And still, we found a lane. Maybe it was law, medicine, engineering, corporate leadership, or entrepreneurship. Maybe it was learning a trade or becoming a community advocate. The details vary, but the grind is the same: take whatever you’re given, flip that into a seat at the table, then turn that seat into a legacy for your children.
That’s Arthur Scott. A paper chaser who got his block on fire.
But here’s the thing about making something from nothing: once you get it, you guard it like your life depends on it. Because in a way, it does.
Mr. Scott is proud, rightfully so, of the life he’s created. And with that pride comes the reflex to control every variable. He wants Peggy to live a certain way, marry a certain type of man, and work in certain spaces. But, because of the shame he carries from his former enslavement, he operates with an existential sense of obligation to his family, but especially to his daughter. He wants her to be safe and, in his mind, safety comes from sticking to the rules that got them here.
He sees the game for what it is and is trying to play it the best he knows how. Tell me that doesn’t sound familiar.
I’ve caught myself doing the same thing with my own daughters, assessing their world through my anxieties and steering them toward what I think is “safe,” what I think is “smart,” what I think is “right.” It’s not about stifling their dreams; it’s about knowing how unforgiving the world can be for Black women, especially when the margin for error is razor-thin.
But therein lies the ugly truth: sometimes that “control” is just fear dressed up as love.
One of the joys of The Gilded Age is watching Mr. Scott realize he is not the only leader in his household. Peggy, independent, talented, and unwilling to be quietly managed, is not afraid to challenge her father. Mrs. Dorothy Scott, his assertive spouse, is the kind of woman who can change the temperature in the room with one raised eyebrow. And then there’s the broader community of Black women in Brooklyn’s elite, strategizing for survival in a world that barely acknowledges their existence.
Sound familiar?
If you are a Black man of my generation, you’ve likely been surrounded and, if you’re honest, guided by women like this. Mothers who told you “no” with a tone that ended the conversation. Partners who had the vision to push past limits you’d made for yourself. Daughters who refuse to accept “because I said so” as an answer. Aunties and sisters who will ride for you but also won’t tolerate the play-play when you’re out of line.
In The Gilded Age, these women don’t just support Mr. Scott; they expand him. They nudge him toward more progressive thinking, toward trusting the strength and judgment of that energy in his life, toward realizing that control is not the same thing as care.
And Black men need to see this.
I know some of the homies see The Gilded Age as “that white people in costumes show.” I mean, yeah. But that’s the thing, it’s not just about them. The presence of the Scotts and the arc that encompasses their story changes the whole landscape. That peek at the primordial that eventually became institutional Black excellence. It forces you to ask: what else have we been left out of in the stories we tell about America? How many Black men like Arthur Scott lived, thrived, and passed on wealth — economic, cultural, and intellectual — while the history books skipped right over them?
For Black men who’ve made it into middle age, watching Mr. Scott is like holding up a mirror. He’s a man who is living with all the trappings and privileges of success, who regales his family with uncomfortable stories of surviving white supremacy. Watching him chuckle while discussing an uncle who was sold down the river over lunch feels no different than telling my kids about guys I knew who sold rocks back in the day.
Slave auctions or corner boys, we were all on the block.
Let’s be real, Arthur Scott’s pharmacy in 1882 provided him with the economic freedom that we all hope the gods of capitalism bestow on all of us someday. We’re all pursuing a place where we can stake a claim in the economy and our community without having to ask permission or be exploitative.
Being a provider and a pillar on your own terms and in your own time is a constant refrain of Black manhood.
And here’s where The Gilded Age earns my respect. It doesn’t turn Arthur Scott into some perfect paragon. It lets him be stubborn, flawed, and human. But it also gives him something so many portrayals of Black manhood don’t. It lets him change.
By the end of certain arcs, you see a man who realizes that love isn’t control, and that the next generation can handle more than you think, even if they do it differently than you would.
That’s a lesson I’m still learning.
It’s one thing to protect your children from the wolves. It’s another to trust them to grow their own teeth. And it’s another level entirely to trust that the women around you might just have a better map than you do.
It’s an odd paradox, really. If we do our jobs as Black men, eventually the people in our lives will not need us. In fact, our evolution is predicated on our obsolescence.
So yeah, I’m a grown-ass man who loves The Gilded Age. I’ll watch Arthur Scott debate the merits of propriety over a plate of oysters and see myself more clearly than I do watching a “30 For 30.”
Because grown manhood, to me, isn’t about sticking to the “approved” list of hobbies, shows, or interests. It’s about discernment. It’s about knowing what feeds you, what challenges you, and what reminds you of who you are and who you can become.
Some weeks, that might be interrogating a Nas verse and how it applies to my current situation (“I don’t work this hard to be around people I don’t like…”). Other weeks, it’s Mr. Scott standing in his pharmacy, wearing the weight of both history and hope, realizing that his daughter’s path doesn’t have to look like his to honor the sacrifices that built it.
So, judge me if you want. I’ll be over here, waiting on Season 4, not just because it’s polite society in high collars, but because somewhere in all that 19th-century décor is a story about us.
We didn’t work this hard to build our futures just to be saddled by our tastes of the past.
Corey Richardson is originally from Newport News, Va., and currently lives in Chicago, Ill. Ad guy by trade, Dad guy in life, and grilled meat enthusiast, Corey spends his time crafting words, cheering on beleaguered Washington DC sports franchises, and yelling obscenities at himself on golf courses. As the founder of The Instigation Department, you can follow him on Substack to keep up with his work.
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