In Boston, the organized busing of white and Black students to schools in other neighborhoods began in 1974, during ZOOM’s third season, after a federal judge found that the city had discriminated against Black students by rigging districts to establish de facto segregation. Board of Education had promised an end to legal school segregation, long-term patterns of racial discrimination in housing had effectively preserved the racial homogeneity of many school districts. While the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. ZOOM was produced at a time of significant racial conflict in Boston.
This framework for racial and ethnic representation stood in contradistinction to the world outside the studio. Reflecting the influence of Black Afrocentric style in the 1970s, ZOOM’s do-it-yourself activities included instructions on how to make one’s own dashiki shirt and how to cornrow hair. In season four, visiting dancers came to the set to teach ZOOMers a variety of styles: Israeli folk dancing, an Irish reel, African dance, square dancing. ZOOM allowed viewers both to identify with children who appeared to share similarities with them and to consider themselves part of a children’s community built across lines of difference. Its ZOOMguests, whose stories were told through short documentary films, offered glimpses of the lives of a broad range of children: Laverne Concha, an Indigenous Puebloan girl living at the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico Marvalene Johnson, a Black girl volunteering at the Humane Society in Madison, Wisconsin Julio Farias, a Latino circus performer in Florida Steven Kwong, an immigrant boy from Hong Kong teaching children at a Kung Fu Academy in Boston. Its opening montage included a close-up handshake between a white and a Black child, and photographs of diverse children as well as images of the multiracial cast. ZOOM modeled racial equality through scenes of inclusiveness and power-sharing among children of different races. Overall, ZOOM celebrated children’s autonomy and their capacity to do interesting and difficult things.
Occasionally, the series spoke more directly about racial, gender, and ableist hierarchies.
The series’ politics were more often implicit than explicit generally, ZOOM advanced progressive ideals by showcasing the experiences of a diverse group of children and celebrating young people with unusual talents or histories. In the 1960s and 1970s, new cultural projects such as ZOOM helped to consolidate liberal ideals for a younger generation, affirming the era’s progressive activism as an intergenerational project.
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