CULTURE.
IN DEFENSE OF THANKSGIVING DINNER: WHAT ALL IN THE FAMILY CAN TEACH US ABOUT DIALECTICS
THE NEW SCHOOL | NOVEMBER 2025
Now imagine Thanksgiving happened every day, and you had no choice but to hash it out with your loved ones each time you sat down for a meal. This is, in essence, the premise — and wager — of the 1970s CBS sitcom All in the Family. A gutsy, long-shot hit, the show was written off as a crude anomaly before becoming one of America’s most beloved series. It flourished because its characters do what humans have always done as social creatures: coexist. Not in an empty, bumper sticker kind of way. Begrudgingly, with difficulty, and to the invaluable end of moderating the self and humanizing the other. In a digital age that makes it easy to avoid ever having to make contact with those with whom you disagree, it’s a helpful reminder that forced togetherness forces us to learn how to live together.
All in the Family dramatizes the generational gap of the counterculture era through the quarrels of a New York City family. Set in the outer borough of Queens, their home is one of a string of cookie-cutter houses located on the fictional Hauser Street in a residential Astoria neighborhood. Inside lives a family of four, helmed by conservative patriarch Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), a stocky, cigar-smoking “loveable bigot,” as he came to be known. He and his homely wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), who often plays dumb to keep the peace but makes her intelligence felt when it’s needed, belong to the Greatest Generation. The couple’s hippie counterparts are their daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers), a spunky young feminist still a little wet behind the ears, and her tall, hunching husband Michael Stivic (Rob Reiner), a headstrong sociology student who serves as Archie’s chief foil.
Premiering January 12, 1971, the pilot was unprecedented in its explicit treatment of race, sex, and religion. Throughout the 26-minute runtime, Archie blithely mouths slurs like “spics” and “spades” and “hebes” and “yids.” Gloria and Mike openly profess atheism. Edith implies her wedding night was thwarted by Archie’s impotence. And Lionel Jefferson (Mike Evans), their Black teenage neighbor, taunts Archie for being Jewish — he’s not — in an anti-semitic gag.
Fearing backlash, CBS almost didn’t run the episode, relenting only after producer Norman Lear threatened to quit. The network was so nervous about the show’s reception that it broadcast a disclaimer that Tuesday night at 9:30 p.m., just before it aired:
“All in the Family seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show—in a mature fashion—just how absurd they are.”
The controversial new series was far from an instant hit, bewildering audiences and dividing critics. CBS and its affiliates received calls from viewers across the country asking variations of “What was that?” and “Is it coming back?” The New York Times posed the rhetorical question, “Are Racism and Bigotry Funny,” accusing the pilot of “lacking taste.” The Hollywood Reporter predicted “an instant disaster,” proclaiming most would find the so-called adult social satire “tasteless, crude, and very unfunny.” They were wrong, but to their defense many were. Even O’Connor was pessimistic, making Lear promise to buy him a first-class ticket back to Rome where he’d been living if they were dropped.
In describing the show’s improbable success, The New York Times later wrote, “Cinderella had nothing on Archie Bunker.” Ranking 55th in the Nielsens after its first week, All in the Family stagnated for months before word-of-mouth recommendations springboarded it to 14th in April. By the end of May, bolstered by three Emmy wins, it claimed the No. 1 spot on the ratings. Summer reruns from the first season cemented it as the top TV show in America, where it remained for a record-breaking five years — a feat to date matched only by The Cosby Show and American Idol.
All in the Family ended up in the living rooms of all America’s families because it reflected the push and pull of their own. Love it or hate it, they could relate. Lear said in 2009:
“I would get mail by the tens of thousands. Whether they agreed with Archie or disagreed with Archie, what they all said was, ‘My father, my mother, my sister, my family, we argued about this, that and the other thing.’ I think conversation about those issues is what our democracy is all about.”
If the Bunker household embodies deliberative democracy, it belongs to an esteemed tradition dating back at least to ancient Greece. While primitive and experimental forms existed prior, scholars generally regard Athens as its birthplace. Differing from modern democracy in form — its governance was direct rather than representative and only men could participate — a through line can be drawn from the 5th century BCE to today in the spirit of its ideals. The contention was, and is, that the best way to test the merit of an idea is to subject it to scrutiny in the public square. There, it can be discussed and debated, exposed and revised, until a greater truth is produced in collaboration than a single mind could have generated alone.
In philosophy, this civic back and forth is known as the dialectical method, a form of inquiry that opens up an argument to questioning to assess its strengths and reveal its weaknesses. The dialectic’s most famous practitioner, Socrates (470–399 BCE), was an Athenian himself. Immortalized in Plato’s dialogues, he is depicted interrogating cocksure figures around the city-state about their theories on morality, justice, knowledge, love, and other eternal subjects. Through his relentless querying, Socrates begins to raise doubts about their confident reasoning. Before long, his interlocutors’ arguments break down, to their rage and embarrassment. The most frequent result is aporia, or a logical impasse.
The German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) called this testy dynamic of human relationships “unsocial sociability.” Think of the line, can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em, but scaled up to people in general. One of human nature’s dualities is that our species evolved as group animals while each individual possesses their own stubborn will. This sets us up for constant conflict, as we need each other to feel whole but bicker any time our wills clash. Kant’s insight is that this conflict is actually generative: by working through disagreements about how to think and live, we progress as a species, overcoming impasses slowly but surely.
G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), Kant’s younger contemporary, took this concept a step further, arguing that all ideas are initially one-sided, only becoming less so after they’re broken down and built back up again. His dialectic consists of three parts: an abstract idea, its negation, and a concrete synthesis that unites the former two in a more encompassing whole. Far from abstruse, Hegel’s dialectic articulates how society itself is refined through the democratic process. (He was a constitutional monarchist, but that’s another story.) It’s also refreshingly anti-dogmatic, implying that no one can be all right all of the time.
But noticing when you’re wrong usually requires being around people, and being forced to listen to them when they point it out. It’s how kids learn from their parents, or students from their teachers. It’s also how adults are supposed to learn from other adults. The problem is, with the screenification of our worlds, we’ve begun to screen out others, and especially those we disagree with. This is especially true of younger generations: in September 2024, the pollster SRC found that 31% of Gen Zers and 25% of Millennials would stop talking to a friend for expressing an inappropriate political view, compared to 15% of Baby Boomers. In the same survey, around one in four Gen Zers and Millennials would cut ties with a family member over the same perceived offense, compared to one in ten Baby Boomers.
The type of sustained engagement that forces us to contend with others’ uncomfortable views and reconsider our own has evaporated along with the public spaces that once facilitated it. A wide array of forces, from disinvestment in community infrastructure in the 1970s to the triumph of the automobile and the television set, slashed opportunities for getting together as it made us less likely to avail ourselves of those that remained. In his 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram,” David Foster Wallace describes TV as a one-way mirror, enabling people to forego “the emotional costs associated with being around other humans” by replacing real people with characters they can judge without fear of being judged back. The advent of the personal computer and world wide web reinforced this behavior, allowing us to judge others risk-free from an anonymous avatar. Beginning in the late aughts, smartphones and apps made it so we’d never have to be without a screen, and Silicon Valley designed algorithms to ensure we never were, gluing us to our feeds by feeding us clickbait appealing to our existing political views while throttling those contrary to them.
This all spells bad news for our prospects of getting along. Researchers in social psychology have long confirmed the contact hypothesis: that the best way to reduce prejudice between members of different social or cultural groups is to put them into direct contact with one another. Doing so promotes “mutual understanding and regard” by replacing stereotypes held about an outgroup with real-life encounters that build rapport. On the contrary, when groups “are isolated from one another, prejudice and conflict grow like a disease.”
It’s easy to hate people from afar; much harder up close. Rather than viewing people’s unflattering character traits in isolation, contact allows us to contextualize them within one’s whole personality. This dynamic is on display in All in the Family from the first episode. The “loveable” qualifier added to Archie’s bigotry feels oxymoronic if not insulting in the abstract. However, it begins to make sense once you meet him. Providing free room and board for his daughter Gloria and her husband Michael while Michael works toward his sociology degree, the following exchange is likely to leave viewers of any political persuasion in stitches:
Michael Stivic:
That’s all you care about, Archie, is what you got and how you can keep it.
Archie Bunker:
Well, you’d care about it, too, sonny boy, if you had anything — if you wasn’t livin’ off of me, without a pot to peel a potato in.
Michael Stivic:
Wait a second. You’re the one who said I could stay here while I was in school.
Archie Bunker:
I thought it was gonna be for a year while you learned a trade or somethin’. I didn’t think you was gonna wind up in college learnin’ how to be a subversive.
Michael Stivic:
That's ridic— I just wanna learn a little bit about society so I can help people.
Archie Bunker:
People? Your mother-in-law and me is people. Help us, will ya. Go to work!
Likely equally humorous to audiences of all political stripes is Archie’s defense of the phrase “black beauties” — his nickname for Black people:
Michael Stivic:
What do you call ‘em “black beauties” for?
Archie Bunker:
Now, that’s where I got you, mister liberal. Because there’s a black guy that works down at the building with me, and he’s got a bumper sticker on his car that says, “black is beautiful.” So what’s the matter with “black beauties?”
Playful teasing has roots older than Homo sapiens and has been shown to increase social bonds. By exchanging a few friendly insults, we break through the politeness barrier, moving from a distanced respect to a genuine form of contact. Austrian psychologist and fellow cigar smoker Sigmund Freud similarly theorized that jokes allow us to express socially taboo thoughts and feelings that our conscience otherwise represses. By providing a release valve for pent up psychic energy, jokes are said to offer a catharsis, reducing tension in the self and between the self and others. As CBS explained in introducing All in the Family, making prejudices a source of laughter lays bare their absurdity.
This sort of obscene banter is best delivered in person, with the aid of facial expressions, body language, and vocal intonation. Think of all the things you’d say in-person to friends that you’d never text. But as the majority of our conversations migrate to the digital sphere, our transgressions of the politically correct are less likely to be perceived as comic relief. Viewed in the stark light of a sterile screen, they become unfriendable, blockable, cancelable offenses. Even Archie’s foregoing quips fall a little flat on the page compared to his on-screen delivery, where he puffs his cigar, waddles around, gesticulates, and wrinkles his forehead while verbally flogging Michael in his working-class New York accent.
The point here isn’t to tolerate intolerance just because it’s funny. But what if we treated the off-color comments of our own Archie Bunkers as internal conflicts they’re thinking through out loud, rather than incontrovertible proof of their dyed-in-the-wool racism and sexism? This more charitable read makes it possible to sit with them through their problematic takes until they’re revealed as lacking. This is just what Mike and Edith do in response to Archie’s claim that minorities have no barriers to getting a good job:
Archie Bunker: Now let me tell you somethin’. If your spicks and your spades want their rightful share of the American dream, let ‘em get out there and hustle for it just like I done.
Michael Stivic: But you're forgetting one thing. You didn't have to hustle with black skin.
Archie Bunker: I didn’t have to hustle with one arm and one leg neither. So what?
Michael Stivic: So you’re admitting that the black man is handicapped.
Archie Bunker: Oh, no, no more than me. He’s just as good as me.
Michael Stivic: I suppose the black man has had the same opportunity in this country as you.
Archie Bunker: More. He’s had more. I didn’t have no million people marchin’ and protestin’ to get me my job.
Edith Bunker: No, his uncle got it for him.
It’s more difficult to maintain faulty views in the company of others, and criticism is more easily accepted when it comes with humor and affection. Rather than enabling intolerance, we create the conditions for defusing it by talking it out. But a constructive conversation demands we admit we don’t have all the answers either, and that we’re interested in figuring them out together. Even more importantly, we must take the time to understand someone’s feelings and values if we hope to have our own considered. Social science tells us this sort of empathy is the key to political persuasion.
As anyone who’s watched the show knows, All in the Family’s characters are much more likely to antagonize one other than empathize, but in certain moments a space opens up for mutual recognition. In a moving scene from an episode titled “The Games Bunkers Play,” Edith explains to Mike why Archie is so hard on him:
Edith Bunker: Don’t you want to hear why Archie yells at you?
Michael Stivic: Ma… I know why he yells at me. He hates me.
Edith Bunker: Oh, no, Mike. Archie yells at you ‘cause he’s jealous of you.
Michael Stivic: Ma, I don't want to listen to this!
Edith Bunker: Oh, now, wait a minute. You will listen to me! Archie is jealous of you.
Michael Stivic: Oh, come on, Ma.
Edith Bunker: Now, that ain’t hard to understand. Mike, you’re going to college and you got your whole life ahead of you. Archie had to quit school to support his family. He ain’t never gonna be nothing more than he is right now. But you, you got a chance to be anything you want to be. That’s why Archie’s jealous of you. He sees in you all the things that he could never be. So the next time Archie yells at you, try to be a little more understanding. Now, you think that over. And when you’re ready, come back in here with us and be with our friends.
Archie Bunker: Keep away from me, Meathead. Oh, are they still all here? Get away from me!
Michael Stivic: Arch, uh… I want to tell you something.
Archie Bunker: Oh, what?
Michael Stivic: I understand. (Hugs Archie.)
Over and above political accord, what we’re really after as social animals is to understand and be understood. This happens in the messy face-to-face encounters, where arguing often leads to impasses and occasionally to insight. In a world where our interactions with flesh and blood people have largely been replaced by digital renderings and usernames, at least one place remains for direct contact: the family dining table. In countless episodes, the Bunkers are shown seated across from one another swapping serving dishes and opinions on everything from the welfare state to ketchup on eggs. They rarely agree on anything, big or small, but they manage to live with and even love each other anyway. And we can, too, at least for an afternoon, by showing up to our own tables this Thanksgiving. If the Bunkers can do it 365 days a year, surely we can survive one.