Print This Post - Take It With You
« John McCain On Birth Control For Women | Home | Monica Dillon’s Pet Frog »
CNN Black In America - African American Speaker Perspective
CNN Black In America - Reflections And Thoughts
CNN will air what will surely be a controversial and well talked about program this Wednesday and Thursday. The series is called Black In America. Hosted by Soledad O’Brian, one of my favorite reporter for asking the right human questions during Hurricane Katrina, the program will feature discussions and issues put forth by both celebrities and everyday people on what seems like every possible issue affecting Blacks in American. Exhibit A.
Okay, there’s the objective stuff out of the way. To hear my quick Youtube opinion, you can view it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fu41vZjKPI
Four hours and this program should go around the world to come back to the conclusion that life in American is not fair for African Americans. However, my guess is that this is exactly what will not be said by most after watching the 4 hour exhibit for those who have no idea what the African American experience is. And I highly doubt CNN will say it either….the views expressed in this program are neither those of this broadcasting network…….etc….etc. Exhibit B
I am troubled by both the timing and message of this program whose trailers and CNN snippets available on CNN’s website and available for purchase on I-Tunes Episode. Get your pass for $2.99 and please update Quicktime….. I have purposely not viewed them.
I have no expectations of CNN and I have no sense of Pride about seeing “my images reflected.” In this case, all press ain’t good press. I do not have an intimate relationship with them, so how could they properly shape my “Black In America” experience without sensationalism and pathology.
Like specimens, you will notice, that the female is given a separate day from the male specimen…so that everyone could keep things less complicated as our 400 year experiment is explained and dissected.
Was it too hard to have a wholistic community perspective or are we really that complex? Or are we still being pitted against each other so we can fight about who’s issues are more important for weeks way after the dust settles….Stay alert, my friends…stay alert…
I ask myself why the name “Blacks In America” was chosen. Could it not be African American in America? Does even the name disassociate people from the African Diaspora from this country that was built by our ancestors at no charge…or the inconceivable transfer of wealth to the current majority ruling class?
The name in and of itself implies that we are still thought of as just visitors instead of the “unofficial” founders who have been here almost as long as the Native Indian people. The people who laid the very bricks that line the streets of Atlanta, Georgia. Yet, I digress again….
I’m troubled that the report will start in the middle of a huge conversation that most of us have never even been listening to. How we got here, why we never went back, when we got equal rights on paper, why we even have Juneteenth celebrations, Jim Crow, Code Noir, Black Law, did I mention Jim Crow, Reconstruction when we ran Congress……Oh…that’s another documentary, you say. Sorry, my bad…
Well that would be fine if everyone had some sense of African American history in general. But we don’t. African American history and the capital H-olocaust of African people is and never has been taught even at the very basic elementary school level the way in which atrocities such as the Jewish Holocaust is expressed and understood.
I’m not falling for it. The very notion of such a program says to me that Americans think our shit is so raggedy someone has to try and document this stuff and help us figure it out. It’s as if the unspoken message is “After all this time…and y’all still haven’t gotten it together yet.
I mean, isn’t that what Obama has been “preaching” to Black fathers and Cosby been venting to every black woman capable of carrying a fetus…(he would know about Black women in a sort of though….Sorry….I digress again
Picture this….Jewish In America, Rapists In America, Stupid In America. I’m sure each group has a story to tell too, but CNN ain’t doing a 4 hour documentary about it. What’s in it for them in this election year?
The program will discuss our troubles with law enforcement as if we too are those hungry bloated children with no food to eat. “You poor thing some will say” leaving no room for anyone to contemplate complicit involvement even from a historical perspective.
Case in point: historically, law enforcement was created and used to police enslaved black folks recent set free. We were not lawless, but still needed. America’s original addiction, like oil, our current addiction, was much too useful and necessary to the continuation of wealth acquisition and land and labor control.
Policing our bodies, one could be charged for vagrancy, re-enslaved and hired out to a land owner to pick cotton if he or she could not prove they had employment and somewhere “to be” just for walking on the road.
No doubt, this still happens. We just don’t call it by the same name. Ask Vincent Moto - who’s story is documented in the documentary “After Innocence.” Exonerated after DNA evidence proved he was not at the scene of the crime, he is still working to rebuild his life after being imprisoned and labored for 11 years.
Some of us will see this reflection and flip out. Some of us will get angry (by the way, I’m not angry, just passionate and crazy enough to lay my stuff out here for personal review…like you really want to see my underwear..right). Digressing…I know…sorry.
Some of us will be embarrassed, shamed, and even avoid lunch conversation at the office. Well I say hold your heads up high. We didn’t get here alone. If you need interference during these troubling times of our half told family business laid out for 4 hours complete with 401k planning, Election 2008, GM is suddenly committed to building greener car commercials, ask who they voted for and why gas has tripled under the current administration.
As an African American I ask that folks seek to understand the entire picture - want a quick lesson - check out “Traces Of The Trade” and pick up “Slavery By Another Name” to start. If you’re still willing to have a conversation after that…I’m down. 
But I digress….
While my emotions run high as a person of color in this experiment called the United States of America who has an incredible amount of freedom as a descendant of the African Diaspora, I am troubled that as global citizens, we in America fall short of writing so many wrongs for the sake of capital and control.
We owe a huge debt that may never be paid to so many groups whom we have oppressed. My ancestors are just one. Yet even as I breath I am conscious of the oppression my birth country of America has and continues to press down upon countries weaker than its own around the world.
To be more specific - the War In Iraq, Silicon from the Congo (don’t you think it’s odd that the continent of Africa is not “wired” the way “industrialized” countries are?) uhmmm…that’s cuz we’re taking all of their silicon for computer chips….yeah…deep, the Global Food Bank, PEPFAR, I could own and on…but then I’d have nothing left to write about here…
Complicit shamefully, I am, but Black in America I am not.
Comments
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.
Tim Ramsey
Thanks for this Monica. I agree that it’s SO important to encourage folks to watch programs like this with a critical eye (if we bother to watch them at all!)
Imma watch it with some other critically minded queer black feminists so I don’t have to keep asking myself “am i crazy?” in isolation.
Also…some of us had an idea to make a collective video response collaboratively on jumpcut to provide some of the alternative perspective that you’re talking about. Would you be interested in collaborating? (You know all my favorite films have your music behind them
love,
alexis
Leave a Comment