Shows like ‘Black-ish’ perpetuate racist stereotypes

This is racism — served with a smile.

“Black-ish,” the hit freshman ABC comedy series that features appealing characters in dumb situations, most of them African-Americans, I believe promotes ugly racial bigotry.

But don’t ask me. Ask Donald Trump.

“How is ABC Television allowed to have a show entitled ‘Black-ish’? ” the real-estate developer and reality-TV babe, a white guy, tweeted in October. “Can you imagine the furor of a show, ‘White-ish’! Racism at highest level?’’

If you won’t listen to Trump, who focused on the show’s jaw-dropping title, then read a petition posted on Change.org urging ABC to cancel “Black-ish.’’

“We find it racist, socially damaging and offensive based on the concept that nonstereotypical black people are less their race than others, that hip hop culture is all blacks are supposed to embrace, and that culture and race are one and the same,’’ the petition reads.

Or, ask my kid.

When she attended a private school in Brooklyn, my daughter’s best friend was a black girl. I don’t think that my child, who is white, even noticed the superficial racial differences between her and her pal. That is, until the day that her fourth-grade teacher, a white man, lectured the inseparable girls, in earshot of their parents, telling them that they must never forget that their skins are of different hues.

I think that he meant well. But as I watched, an expression of utter bewilderment overtook my daughter’s face as her innocence was stripped away.

Or, ask a barista.

Many Starbucks drink-slingers last month annoyed the coffee-selling chain’s customers nationwide by writing the words “Race Together’’ on cups, using a condescending, corporate-generated slogan in an effort to spark unnecessary and unhelpful conversations about race relations.

“Black-ish’’ brings about the same kind of racial lunacy, making people of all skin colors appear biased, clueless and, most of all, racist. The show presents tortured portrayals of African-Americans with money, pushing the false notion that affluent blacks become middle-class members of the bourgeoisie — folks derided as “bougie’’ (pronounced bhoo-shee) in the show’s parlance.

In the world of “Black-ish,” well-to-do black people are not black at all. They’re “black-ish.’’ All this is played for yuks.

I believe that the majority of Americans have moved beyond being punch lines in sick ethnic jokes. But I don’t make TV shows.

In “Black-ish,’’ Anthony Anderson, one of the show’s co-executive producers, plays Andre “Dre’’ Johnson Sr., a black version of the white, race-obsessed Archie Bunker character from the 1970s TV sitcom “All in the Family.’’ A successful advertising executive, Dre is married to a doctor, Rainbow, or “Bow’’ (Tracee Ellis Ross), whose mother is black and father white, which Dre apparently sees as a shortcoming. In several cringe-worthy scenes, he rubs his wife’s mixed-race parentage in her face.

Laurence Fishburne, also a show co-executive producer, plays Dre’s curmudgeonly father, Earl “Pops’’ Johnson.

Dre and Bow are raising four kids in a grand house in an upper-middle-class Los Angeles neighborhood dominated by white people. And while Dre, who grew up in more humble surroundings, tries desperately to remind the children of their racial identity, his younger kids either don’t seem to realize, or think it’s no big deal, that Barack Obama is the first biracial president of the United States.

In the first episode, Dre’s 12-year-old son, Andre Jr. (Marcus Scribner), asks his father for a bar mitzvah on his 13th birthday, like those of his rich-kid friends, although he isn’t Jewish. He also wants to be called the less-black-sounding “Andy’’ and, rather than play basketball, he wants to go out for field hockey, which his dad savages as a sport for white girls. In another episode, Dre’s 15-year-old daughter, Zoey (Yara Shahidi), gets dumped by her white, French boyfriend, coincidentally named Andre. But she’s delighted to learn that Andre dumped her not because of racial differences, but because he found her “shallow.’’

Hilarity ensues as Dre, reluctantly, accepts his kids’ choices.

This season, Fox debuted the hit TV drama series “Empire’’ about a clan of African-Americans whose members got rich from the family’s music company. Patriarch Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) is a former drug dealer who worries that his three sons are spoiled rotten. But he’s not plagued by the kind of existential turmoil that grips Dre.

ABC brass have yet to announce if “Black-ish’’ will see a second season. But a TV insider assured me that the show will be back. (“Empire’’ has already been renewed.)

We’re almost certain to see more racist drivel masquerading as social commentary.

Slice out the budget pork

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — ACORN — shut its doors in 2010. That didn’t prevent the defunct, leftist nonprofit organization from being granted $24,523 in taxpayer money in the $142 billion New York state budget approved by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders this past Wednesday.

Another taxpayer-funded outrage is the $125,000 appropriation for the Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York and the at least $2.2 million award that’s intended to stop the Buffalo Bills football team from leaving the state. Cornell University got $12,000 for onion research and another $200,000 for beer-making research. Plus $5,000 was awarded to Out of the Pits, a group that aids stray pit bulls. One government critic estimates that the budget includes $87 million in pork-barrel spending.

The governor has 10 days from the time the budget passed to veto spending items. Do it.

‘ISIS’ gals at home with terror

Two ISIS-loving Queens women who were busted by the feds last week and charged in a plot to use weapons of mass destruction against New York City targets are American citizens. If convicted, the gals, who luckily have not blown up anything, could be locked up for life.

The Islamic State terror group devotees, former roommates Asia Siddiqui, 31, and Noelle Velentzas, 28, allegedly stockpiled bomb components and said they hoped to become “real bad bitches” during a conversation with an undercover officer who befriended them in 2013, according to a federal complaint. Siddiqui, authorities claim, had contact with terrorists of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

How can women who enjoy all the freedoms that this country has to offer allegedly go so bad?

Brooklyn is starting to head down‘hill’

There goes the neighborhood.

The headquarters for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s maybe-campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination won’t be located in Manhattan, but in Brooklyn Heights. After aide Huma Abedin scoped out 1 Pierrepont Plaza, Politico.com reported, a lease was signed to rent two floors in a building touted on its website as “Modern Offices. Brooklyn Cool.’’

More like gentrified and insanely expensive.