In
19th and early 20th century America, degrading depictions of Black
people served the larger society's cultural, commercial and political
ends. The images echoed and reinforced white supremacist notions which
underlay the social order, and they moved products
off the shelves too.
Today's 21st century minstrel circuit -- BET, MTV and a large slice of commercial Black radio and the so-called hip-hop industry, serve much the same ends, with a few new wrinkles. Corporate marketers have become adept at appropriating elements of urban youth culture for use in selling products and "lifestyles" and combining these with violence, gratuitous sex, homophobia and misogyny.
The fantasy world they depict extols conspicuous consumption at the same time that it degrades black humanity and justifies the
larger society's resort to mass imprisonment as the social policy of
choice for dealing with black and brown youth. This
being the age of "diversity", a layer of Black execs and
entertainers are involved at every level, and entitled to a substantial
cut. The best known of these, BET founder Bob Johnson may be worth a
billion dollars. Hundreds of other black fortunes have been made off
the vicious, clownish
caricatures of African America depicted on BET and similar places.
Black
popular discontent with the kind of entertainment programming offered
by BET, MTV and much of black commercial radio is nothing new.
But the public critiques of rap and hiphop music by figures like C. Delores Tucker
could never empower black communities to force the media regime to
change. They focused the blame exclusively upon rap
musicians and music consumers for selling and buying the degrading stuff.
This
useless frame of reference sucks all the oxygen out of rooms before any
productive discussion can begin. It diverts attention away from
the corporate executives who decide which artists get airtime on the
public broadcast spectrum, or which ones have access to the big
privately owned but universally bond and tax-supported concert venues
in every city and town
in the nation. It completely lets off the hook legislators and the
regulators of federal
broadcast and local cable regimes, whose negligence and complicity
with the billion dollar minstrel show industry ensure that it's the
only "black" content reaching the ears of the young. Instead, the
young are blamed for consuming the only images and buying the only
music corporate execs and regulators
allow them to hear.
This disempowering
critique, which blames the relatively weak while leaving the powerful
undisturbed has long been the default conversation among blacks
dissatisfied with media.
But the current wave of black grassroots
media activists are wiser, and begin from a very different place.
Their beef starts not with the artists and consumers of commercial hiphop
and degrading "entertainment", but with the billion dollar
corporations, execs and advertisers that push it on the public. Hence
their first picket line wasn't at a rap concert. It was at the home of
a corporate CEO.
"This isn't about one corporate executive, or even about one corporation," declared Rev. Delman Coates, pastor of Virginia's Mt. Ennon Baptist church. "It's about holding corporations, their executives, their investors and their advertisers responsible for the product they issue and the lasting harm it does to our people."
"Everywhere
I go" said one young black man who took part in the demonstration
"people think I'm a thug because of what they see. (on BET)"
"BET
and I are the same age, 27." declared Carla Brooks. "It's high time
for BET to grow up and start acting its age. We demand that BET become
responsible, be accountable to the black community, and that it offer
unique and varied perspectives on issues relevant to the black
community."
This
is a heavy and significant demand, one that corporate media will
stubbornly resist until forces in our communities raise the price of
business as usual to unacceptable levels. Picket lines at the homes of corporate execs are just a start. Rev. Coates is a spokesperson for the Enough Is Enough Campaign. He
said they began by asking for a meeting with Lee, and had been
rebuffed, till he announced the demonstration in front of Lee's home.
"Several people, intermediaries reached out to us. We got a calls from our congressman, Stenny Hoyer and others." Eventually Bob Johnson himself called. "He was worried," Rev. Coates said, "that a rally in front of Lee's home would make us look bad in front of white people."
Given what we see on BET every day, that should be the least of Bob Johnson's worries.
What
should keep him, and the rest of the black entertainment/minstrel show
industry up late at night is the prospect that grassroots black
activists is beginning to find common cause with the growing movement for a
just, fair and democratic media. When that happens their demands will
expand to the inclusion of locally driven black-oriented news
programming on BET and black radio stations in hundreds of markets, and
the opening up of the airwaves to low power and other noncommercial
broadcasters that carry local artists and quality content to compete
with the minstrel show garbage.
Bob
Johnson's worst nightmare would be for a black movement for media
justice to capture the creativity and energy of the
urban youth that corporate culture so viciously caricatures and for
those black activists to recall their almost forgotten spirit of
impolite local initiative and civil disobedience. If that happened,
protesters demanding a wholesale reshuffling of the media deck would
suborn relations between advertisers on black radio, on MTV and BET by
convincing them that buying time on stations and outlets that don't do
news but manage to air plenty of disrespect is bad business. They
might
routinely picket "live remotes" and other out-of-studio public
appearances of broadcast personalities.
BET
is set to hold its annual star-studded and blinged-out 2007 Hip Hop
Awards in Atlanta on October 13, for airing on the 17th. We asked Rev.
Coates of Enough is Enough whether he and thousands of concerned
citizens planned to show up at the Atlanta Civic Center that day uninvited.
"We're
in touch with a lot of people, including some in Atlanta who might like
to do just that," he said. "Se we expect to make a major announcement
on our plans for that within the next week. Meanwhile we expect to be
back at (BET CEO) Lee's house next Saturday afternoon. Those who want
to join us, or just to be informed should check us out online at
www.enoughisenoughcampaign.com."
We
think it's time for Bob Johnson, Deborah Lee, MTV, Radio One, Clear Channel and the rest of the
minstrel show industrial complex to be afraid. Very afraid. And for the rest of
us, it's time to be hopeful.
- Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report
- www.EnoughIsEnoughCampaign.com