The CBS sitcom “Touched by an Angel” is being reexamined through a new lens as a complicated episode about racism is being recirculated on social media.
The drama starred beloved “Harlem Nights” actress Della Reese as Tess, a supervisor of sorts for angels in training, and Roma Downey as Monica, an angel grappling to understand the human experience.
It has become a topic of discussion amid outcry over white author Sam Forster disguising himself as Black to “document how racism persists in American society” for his new book “Seven Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern America.” John Howard Griffin predated Forster by decades with a similar social experiment for his book “Black Like Me,” published in 1961.
Backlash includes people stating the obvious, that he could have spoken with Black people instead of using blackface to have a Black experience. Which, therein lies the connection to “Touched by an Angel.”
Reacting to Forster’s debacle, an X user wrote, “That reminds me of that episode of ‘touched by an angel’ when monica was Black. when these yt men were chasing her, she prayed SO hard for God to reverse that thang.”
Last summer, I disguised myself as a Black man and traveled throughout the United States to document how racism persists in American society.
— Sam Forster (@ForsterSam) May 28, 2024
Writing Seven Shoulders was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a journalist.
It’s out on May 30th:https://t.co/jK2kvIPh1H pic.twitter.com/TE8mEfOiHi
During season 5 episode 23 “Black Like Monica” (1999), Downey’s character is unable to make the connection between the lynching of a man named Moody in a rural southern Illinois town and race. An investigation into the tragedy is delayed as the mayor is preparing to welcome Rosa Parks for a civil rights celebration and does not want a hate crime to ruin the planned events.
As a result of Monica’s probing for answers about the murder, she is locked up, and at the behest of God, she undergoes a shocking transformation — her skin becomes brown and her hair goes from straight brown locs to curly tresses styled in an afro.
This is what happened to that author that became black for their story https://t.co/ChVvcrxn78
— Mr. I Told You So (@DotMyNameOnYou) May 30, 2024
Later in the episode, while trying to flee two men suspected of killing Moody, she says, “In that moment I realized everything. I was human and I was going to die.” As she hid behind a tree, gasping to catch her breath, she prayed, “Oh dear God in Heaven, I’m so afraid, please, please, make me white again.” By the time one of the men finds her, she is white, panicked, and pleading, “Please don’t,” only to be told to relax and that he was looking for a “n—er woman.”
In another scene, while on a bus with Parks, Tess tells Monica that God allowed her to experience being Black “to change your heart because you can’t go on preaching against the darkness until you’ve seen it in yourself first. And there’s not too many politically correct ways to do that, you just have to jump in and dig deep until you face yourself.” X users were stunned by the forgotten episode.
“Is she in blackface? am I tripping?” asked one dumbfounded person. Some others felt that the episode could not have garnered Reese’s approval. They wrote, “Wooooow, I used to love this show. Della musta been out of the country when they did this episode.”
A third user said, “So this is where Rachel Dolezal got her inspiration from lol.” Rachel Dolezal, also known as Nkechi Diallo, is a white woman who fooled the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, where she served as president, and many others that she was a fair-skinned Black woman for decades.
Rachel Dolezal, who pretended to be Black for years, says she hasn’t been able to find a job for 6 years
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) February 11, 2021
“Being a maid at a hotel, working at a casino. I wasn’t able to get any of those jobs either.” https://t.co/USa3TYEjtU pic.twitter.com/jBEynKiwZV
She defended the lie, saying that she denounced her whiteness and its privilege in order to be a true ally. Despite being outcast for cosplaying her cultural identity, she continues to see herself as a Black woman.
And a fourth person shared, “And of course this actor is married to Mark Burnett-the man that has the recordings of trump during The Apprentice using racial slurs, but won’t release it.” It was also noted that Monica “prayed to be white & not to end racism.”
“Touched by an Angel” ran for seven seasons between 1994 and 2003. Reese passed away in 2017 at the age of 86. The long-running series spawned the short-lived spinoff “Promised Land.”
