Before I begin, please allow me to send greetings to my new friends who follow me on Paperblog. “HELLO!!” ((waving)) Thanks for reading!!
I’m ranting for a minute y’all. Nothing makes my skin crawl more than criticism without a purpose. I understand constructive criticism but some folks just mouth off for now effin reason. My people in particular get on my last nerve with this. Case in point this pathetic blog post about Soledad O’Brien and her Blacks in America series. Apparently, O’Brien has retained the rights to her series as part of her severance package from CNN. Good for her! Black in America and Latino in America will go on under her brand. The blogger, named Sergio, sounded off about how he not only didn’t like the series because she didn’t tell the whole story of Blacks in America but that Soledad herself doesn’t show her Blackness enough. WTF?!?!
This post is so hateful and absurd. First of all, You cannot tell the whole story of being Black in America because there simply isn’t enough time. Of course there are many many stories of my people but there’s not one netwrok that would give a story teller that much time to show it all (not even Black owned networks such as TV One or BET). If a producer really wanted to share our whole story it would take multiple episodes and you still wouldn’t cover it all. It’s too lengthy, folks would get bored and ratings would drop. I don’t know Soledad personally (I met her once at a journalist convention. She’s delightful in person.) but I venture to say that it wasn’t her intention to tell the whole story of Black folks. She probably just wanted to share a few snapshots of us. Nothing more.
Then Sergio laces his piece with the theme of choosing to be Black when it’s convenient. I’ve heard this said about other Blacks in the past including our president. I’m not going to totally discredit this notion because it happens sometimes. Some African-Americans do not address, identify with, or defend Black America in any way. That is sad. But when and where you’re supposed to ‘be Black’ hasn’t really been defined either. Sergio says stuff like
“Yet O’Brien (who only seems to “come out” as a black person when she has one of those specials to hype)”
or
“But in an interview with Business Week last week she revealed that she has obtained the rights to the Black in America franchise (as well as the one for Latino in America too just in case she wakes up feeling especially Hispanic that day)”
What the hell does that mean? She’s Black all day long fool!! And she’s Latina all day long. She knows it. We can see it. When exactly are you supposed to pimp your race? What’s the schedule for shouting out “I’m Black and I’m proud” on national television? This post is farcical. The writer sounds like one of these jealous, obnoxious, backyard conspiracy theorists that thinks that White people are the enemy and Black folks are supposed to somehow revolt against the machine. Wake up! We don’t have to ‘impress’ White people by exploiting our culture for ratings on CNN. There’s nothing unBlack about showing people of all races a few glimpses of what our culture is like from the inside. And I don’t expect (nor should any rational person expect) for White folks to love us more after viewing this series. O’Brien’s series is merely a peek at Blacks and Latinos for informational purposes. No more. No less.
Click here to read the article for yourself. I hesitate giving you the link on my page because I don’t want this idiot getting anymore attention. But I guess you would have to read it for yourself to see what I mean.
Thanks for reading!
