Bethonie Butler > Quotes

“Love for his costars notwithstanding, Reid didn’t realize what Sister, Sister meant to fans until a few years after the show ended. He was at an event in Houston when a young woman approached him. She had grown up in foster care, she told him, and had spent her childhood moving from one foster home to another—never staying longer than a year—though some years were better than others. She was in a rough period when she started watching Sister, Sister, and one day she decided that whatever Ray told Tamera she would take it as a life lesson for herself. “I’ve watched every show multiple times,” the woman told Reid. “I just want you to know that you raised a good daughter.” The woman shared that she was a college graduate and an artist. She was engaged to be married. And with that, Reid says, she gave him a hug and left. “I stood there stunned,” he recalls. “I’ve known this, the power of television, but I went ‘wow’—that made me even more respectful for what we do and also why we have to have a bit more concern about the kind of messages we throw out there.”
― Bethonie Butler, Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond