Home-Schooling in David Makes Man

Abstract

This essay explores the logic of capitalism that shapes the experiences of a precarious Black Miami teen in the OWN television series David Makes Man. Analyzing seven episodes of the first season, we develop the concept of home-schooling to describe hustlin’ as a capitalist logic operating within Florida public housing and meritocracy as a capitalist logic celebrated at an elite magnet school to reveal imaginative possibilities of survival in Miami. In this essay, we engage the circuit of culture to interrogate issues of racialized-class in the television series and within a broader social context.