In the words of Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather: hated it. It felt to me like two hours of rubbing salt in the wounds of the problems in the Black community while offering little (if any) solutions toward remedying these staggering conditions. I mentioned sometime during my Twitterfest during the two 2-hour installments that I felt like CNN phoned it in. In Part 1, they mainly focused on the Rand family, picked and chose relatives from within that one family, and tried to present it as a microcosm of Black women in America. Part 2 focused on two men attached by the Little Rock Nine and their struggles while presenting it as a microcosm of Black men in America. Overall, neither installment did their topics full justice. Or even half justice, to be honest. The series felt like a primer for non-Black communities to get a glimpse into the Black community through use of an annoying spoken word poet, bold fonts, and statistics (without explanation). Overall, it just rubbed me the wrong way for several reasons (even more than what’s mentioned here). Then again, could you really expect an American news organization to condense the 200+ year “Black experience” in all its intricacies and nuances and developments since the assassination of Dr. King forty years ago into just a four-hour period?
Deep sighs all around.
So what did you think about the series? Provocative? Watered-down? Necessary? Share your thoughts here, and please, do not hold back. I sure as hell won’t.
Wasn’t worth the effort that was taken to produce it. As I wrote on someone else’s blog, I question who the intended audience was. It certainly wasn’t us!
It was a waste of time. Black people certainly weren’t the target audience. I was sittin there thinkin…”I know this shit already! Now what?” The documentary was devoid of solution. I’m still annoyed about it today.
Still looking to white people for “the solution”?
No wonder people “didn’t like it”.
The “solution” is clear. The black nuclear family has fallen apart, and this is the result.
The single greatest determinant of success is the family. Period.
@jon: “The single greatest determinant of success is the family.”
Success is different things to different people, and I don’t necessarily believe that family is the best solution. The problems in the Black community are far too widespread and complex to be boiled down to one single remedy. Family can help, but it’s no panacea.
I suspect that CNN’s budget was not considerable and it is far cheaper to do as they did, focus on the singular (in hopes of the singular serving as a microcosm of the larger Black community), than to explore the Black arena from a far wider POV. That said, it came up woefully short.
None of the people I know liked the Black in America special.
Personally, I think it was just a long caricature of African Americans in the Media.
While our community certainly is responsible for many of our short comings, what does not help is the constant attention directed toward our problems and only our problems.
The majority of blacks are middle class, on TV they are poor.
The majority of successful blacks are not athletes and entertainers… they are regular 9 to 5 folks or entrepreneurs.
If Blackness was a brand, it could be said that we need an image makeover. Let’s focus on the positive, Business owners, Scientists, Lawyers etc… We need to penetrate all segments of society and break this 1 dimensional view of what being Black in America is.
I didn’t watch it, nor would i even entertain the notion. Every program i’ve ever seen up til now has always distilled the essence of the Black Experience to problems WE refuse to solve due to ineptitude and not social inequality that’s been institutionalized in EVERY race besides our own. “sigh”, at this point, i expect it.
it was the truth – prison systems, majority of black children don’t grow up with fathers, poverty, lack of education – it may not be the reality for the 6 or so ppl who have commented on this site – but lucky you! its the truth – sigh what? that is black america for many – the Cosby family isn’t the norm – places like “babyland” – poor cemeteries seems far more common for black children then schools – and thats the truth – as for solutions – its a documentary for god’s sake! go press your representatives for solutions – or better yet raise your children! why do ppl try to deny the truth? when more than half of black children don’t graduate – its a problem!
a baby dies every 43 hours in Memphis
Memphis has the highest mortality rate in the nation
the infant mortality rate of 3 zip codes in Memphis is worse than some third world countries
almost twice as many infants died in 2006 than the total number of deaths by homicide in Memphis. for all these reasons – Necessary.
@wow: Hello Canadian visitor! No one is saying that the documentary was false; it just wasn’t wholly representative of the Black community in America. Perhaps no four hour documentary could, whether it was done by CNN or any other news agency. Oh, and Memphis != America, so wherever you copied and pasted those statistics from did little to prove your rambling “point”.
Of course it wasn’t meant to provide any solutions or even present the truth!! haha!
Its precise intent is to seed despair and desolation in the minds of those who watch it. An attempt to crush the hopes of those who might also strive to do better.
CNN has become as corporate as it gets, not on the side of the people or even basic journalism.
Like your blog. I too hated the CNN special.