No, that isn’t a typo in the title.
For the past few weeks I, along with much of Black America, had been anticipating the airing of CNN’s series, “Black in America.” I must admit, I had some trepidation about the program because you just never know what to expect when major television networks start talking about Black people. Soledad O’Brien made strong efforts at selling the purpose of the series and overall emphasis behind CNN’s yearlong multimedia examination of Black America.
While watching the first part of the series, which focused on the Black woman and family, I experienced a plethora of emotions. First, I was happy to see a multi-faceted portrayal of the complexities of the Black American family. I also found myself saying, “Its about damn time,” while trying to remain appreciative of the that fact that it was on the air at all. I haven’t seen programming like this on BET in ages, if at all since its take over by (or sell out to) Viacom. Fox Networks damn sure wouldn’t do it. ABC is the only other network I’d imagine to have chutzpah to something like this. I digress.
….I wrote the above paragraphs the day after the first part of the series aired.
Now that I have had time to hear and reflect on the reactions of my colleagues, family, and the Black community at large, I continue to have mixed feelings. Mr. Earl Graves, Sr., founder of Black Enterprise Magazine, was on the Steve Harvey Morning Show this morning offering commentary on the series, noting that it was overly negative and only helped to reinforce negative stereotypes of Black folks. He also was upset by the fact that such a “negative” program is airing at all in 2008, let alone in same year that we have a Black man knocking on the door to the White House and U.S. Presidency. He even mentioned church leaders planning protests and demonstrations and such in reaction to the series.
I have heard and read similar sentiments by other Black folks…
…Please see Take 2 for the rest.
