Keep yo Clair, I’m here for Cookie!

With Fox’s “Empire” 2-hour season finale airing tomorrow, y’all knew I was gonna talk about Cookie, right?

Clair Huxtable ranks at the top of almost every list of television mothers and was even voted Television’s Favorite Mom in 2004. HBCU-educated (but didn’t pledge a sorority… really?), beautiful, bilingual, and Black, Clair was the palatable equal to her on screen doctor husband Cliff (Imma leave Bill Cosby alone right now, this ain’t about him). Hair always perfectly straightened, bumped, and in place, she made partner at a law firm while raising five kids of her own and a host of grandkids and neighbors. Clair was a supermom always outsmarting her hubby, encouraging her children to succeed in academic endeavors, and reading her in-laws when necessary. She was mainstream’s introduction to the “upward mobility” Blacks and a Black mom-lite course for some. Everyone (who had a TV set) could access a piece of their mothers in Clair, almost blinding her to the fact that she was—indeed—a Black momma! But how accessible was the unconditional love Clair gave as a Black mom? How many Black kids can see her? Sure, if I’m as “classically” beautiful as Sondra, as smart as Vanessa, as EVERYTHING as Denise (yas she was my favorite and I still think her character was gay), or the baby of the family like Rudy, I could wrap my mind around having an infallible Black momma who never cries, whips my behind, or shows up at my school with her hair wrapped ready to fight the principal…

But I’m not that kid.

Who ranks at the top of my television mom list? Cookie Lyon! We meet Cookie on the day she is released from prison after serving 17 years for dealing dope—the very crime that funded her ex-husband’s rise to Hip Hop royalty. Unlike Clair, Cookie isn’t hiding behind any Black respectability politics. She won’t be checked by anyone and has one goal: to take what’s hers! Cookie is clear from episode one, she wants her damn respect and she did what she did to position her children for success in an unjust world that she knew too well would not be fair to them—especially her middle son, Jamal, who is gay. Even more? She’s down for sisterhood! Not the “upward mobility” sisterhood, nah… the sista-hood of walking into a board meeting full of executives and suits and saying “hey sistah girl” to the only other woman in the room. The sista-hood of giving Porsha’s ass a job as an assistant, even if she ain’t qualified (cause you know she’s not). The sista-hood of pointing out the brilliance of Black women to her son Andre who claims he married a White woman because she’s “brilliant.”

But here’s some things about Cookie you might not have picked up on this season:

1. She plays the piano… like, a legit piano! Who taught a dope dealin’ black girl to play piano? The ancestors, that’s who!
2. She knows her musical business! What’s an A&R? Shit, I don’t know!
3. She loves her children, unwaveringly!
4. She walks in heels like they’re sneakers (for real tho! Six inches and she’s kicking cars and strollin’)
5. She’s pro-LGBT/Queer… but shit, what Black “make it work” momma ain’t? (I will have none of your “black people are more homophobic” here, thank you)
6. She is a mental health warrior… 17 years in prison and a lifetime of Black pain and she’s still a baddie! Not to mention her support of Andre!
7. She loves the lord and you WILL say grace before shoving food in your mouth at her dinner table!
8. She’s a Black feminist! But some of us were brave indeed!

She liked Lucious better when he was a thug because he lived and told his truth then and didn’t cower behind the false “bootstrap” model of America. Cookie doesn’t hold her truth from anyone. She’s not positioning herself as her ex-husband’s equal a la Clair; she’s proving to him that she is smarter, flyer, and well…better!

But above all, Cookie tops my list because of #5. Sure, Clair, it’s easy to motivate “American sweetheart” children who blend well into White heteronormative society, but Cookie is a divorced felon (Google prison industrial complex before you come for Cookie and her alternative economic success) raising a wanksta, a queen, and a son with Bipolar I. Her kids know her sacrifices for them, and if they don’t she won’t hesitate to remind them (just ask Hakeem and that broom beatdown). Her acceptance of Jamal is a Black momma’s love that I can relate to as a kid that’s fucked with blending in my entire life. She doesn’t have your historically white or black institution of higher education words for her son, but she knows that he’s “different” and always has been. She will fight the love of her life to allow him to play in her pink kitten heels and for him to have a hit record. Cookie comfortably lays on the bed where Jamal and “Dora” just smashed and doesn’t bat an eye at walking in on them together. She pushes him to live his truth and celebrate who he is, not just because as a broke Black woman she knows how pointless it is to hide who you are to try to blend, but also because she knows the “gay” script and how many “white kids in Brooklyn and San Francisco” will buy it, allowing him to financially support himself outside of Lucious. She invites Michael—Jamal’s boyfriend—to the family dinner that Lucious leaves him out of and dares Lucious to buck! Cookie sees his talent and won’t allow him to hide it. She lives for her kids and fights for Jamal at every turn. And he knows it.

I’m that kid and Cookie is the mother that I need, want, and have. Okay, so Sharon (my momma) isn’t a felon by your standards, but I promise you she’s one collect call away. All Black mommas are—mess with their babies if you want to! *Cues Dej Loaf’s Try Me*

Cookie is the mother for the Black misfit toys—the fat girls whose mothers made sure their hair and ‘fits were slaying the skinny girls so they wouldn’t get picked on; the sissies who got chased to the school bus by basketball players (who probably wanted to fuck) and their mommas made them fight; the tomboi’s whose mothers asked them to try dressin’ like a girl, just for the first day of school; the girls on the boulevard who could jump double dutch because their mommas taught them at night in the park when nobody else was around to see them mess up; the bookworm whose momma brought home books that she would never read, but knew there was something in there “smart people knew” so her baby would know it too; the food stamp kids whose mommas walked six blocks and caught two busses to get to the “good neighborhood” to buy fresh fruit… That’s the mother that tops my list, and Cookie is serving you that and more.

Step yo Cookies up, Clair; your Brooklyn Heights silence will not protect you. But then again, the streets ain’t made for everybody—that’s why they made sidewalks!

Header image credit: Mom.me/Multifandom Screencaps