“When I first started tattooing, it was a very closed-off industry - especially for tattoo artists of color,” says Katrina “Kat Tat” Jackson, who starred in the first three seasons of “Black Ink Crew: Chicago” and recently returned to the franchise as a part of “Black Ink Crew: Compton.” “It was not easy to walk into a shop and get an apprenticeship, and I felt like most Black tattoo artists were looked at as ‘scratchers,’ because we weren’t professionally trained and had to start out of our basement or dorm room.” When Jackson was first starting out in the early 2010s, she says it was pretty much impossible for a Black artist to get white tattooers who owned shops to agree to give them apprenticeships. But while Ami James and Kat Von D were introducing the art form to suburban families, “Black Ink Crew” showed representations of highly skilled African American artists who were typically ignored in an industry dominated by white and Latinx tattooers. When “Black Ink Crew” premiered on VH1 in 2013, it didn’t quite garner the same global impact as “Miami Ink.” By that point, the TLC show (and its spinoff, “LA Ink”) had given millions of viewers across America a peek into a subculture that had long been considered taboo. While tattoo reality shows have become something that we’ve just learned to live with, there are still some that can make more of an impact than others - particularly within certain communities. But now, it’s hard for even the most informed and passionate fans to read anything more than a headline when there’s news. When the first big one hit (TLC’s “Miami Ink” in 2005), it changed the world.

Reality TV shows within the tattoo community are a little bit like strains of COVID-19.

Chicago ink show