Black on Black Image Portrayal

Protesting Demeaning Images in Media

Normally I dismiss many cries of racism that involve perception rather than overt acts against people or individuals as being without any substance, but I found some interesting points that the protesters here bring up with which I agree:

(1) America is a segregated country.

(2) Media portrayals of one segment of the population can affect they way a group as a whole is perceived by groups that have little or no contact with that group.

I think I agree with both of these statements, however, I do not ultimately side with the protesters on this for a number of reasons. This is primarily because of my moral convictions that bright line rules are often the best for society to use not because they necessarily always yield the best outcome in every situation, but because they make it a lot easier for everyone to make decisions. It's saves time when we know the rules and they are easy to apply to reality. That way we don't spend years and years fighting over minutiae building toward some amorphous ideal or sentiment that is not easily quantifiable and subject to abuse through subjective and selective interpretation. In this case, my bright line rule is against censorship of any kind by adults free to make their own decisions.

While I agree with the protesters that they are likely right as to the result and affect of these negative portrayals having a negative effect on black people as a whole, I abhor the idea of censorship. The simple argument when the media is playing this type of crap is, of course "turn it off", however, their argument is they can turn it off, but that won't prevent other people from watching and getting the wrong message. Absolutely true. In this case, of course, it is even more ironic because the protest is against a black run and owned network who employs black actors to play roles that other black people find demeaning to all black people as a whole. Not being a minority in this country, I cannot really relate exactly to the concerns, but I do understand and do believe it is problem. However, my moral guidelines that speak out against censorship tells me that telling the network "thou shalt not do anything which offends" is not the way to go. I do not have the solution just yet though.

As far as the US being a segregated country, yes. It is segregated racially, religiously, and any other number of ways depending on the criteria you select. Racial segregation, however, is obviously something that we have struggled with in this country for a long time. We have not needed laws to keep Lutherans and Methodists from fighting with each other, but we have needed laws and the force of arms to keep places from being segregated. We are probably more obsessed with racial equality in this country than any other country in the world. In Belgium the two native populations are at each other's throats figuratively. In the rest of the world, when there are two or more distinct races, one usually dominates the others through force of law. In those countries, racism is the official undeclared policy, but often the issue does not get a lot of attention until it breaks into full scale war or genocide (e.g. Rwanda, Yugoslavia, etc.). In this country the official policy is to oppose racism and we almost seem to celebrate it the way we overdo it by finding it where it doesn't exist or exaggerating what I would call petty racism into a major crisis. These episodes wind up taking away from the real fight against racial equality because it is something that already exists under law and can only be won in people's minds. Turning a flip, unscripted remark from Imus into a showcase for why America is a racist country just convinces many people that there is no struggle left if the country goes DEF-CON 1 on a one-time idiotic remark.

The problem is, however, that this nation will always be segregated racially one way or another because this nation will likely have a steady stream of immigrants from one part of the world or another for the foreseeable future. Right now, we are seeing areas that are essentially segregated Mexican areas. There are stories of some basically acted as independent enclaves and those stories are only likely to increase. So do we take the complicate route of constantly emerging standards to fight different prejudices or stereotypes as they arise, or do we draw the bright line of saying censorship is never the answer? I say the latter of course because I believe in the long run it is the most sustainable and easiest to administer.

So in my mind, using segregation as an issue, while valid, only further complicates the formula for determining how and when the media is allowed to portray members of one group of another (even if only collectively as a by-product of a trend). Would there ever be a time where a white portrayal in the media is viewed as being so negative and wide-spread that it should be censored? It is, of course, always argued that because whites are the majority of the population in this country, the problem isn't the same. I think that is valid, but let me ask what is more damaging to society as a whole: (a) negative fictitious portrayals of black youth in the media or (b) the seeming glorification of the actual lives of young white females such as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears (not to mention the Girls Gone Wild genre).

I can tell you which will more likely have a negative impact on my family. I have black neighbors and friends that my family will come into contact with on a regular basis, so there is likely no risk of my children assuming that Snoop Dogg or Flavor Flav are representative of black people as whole. There is, however, a huge risk that my daughters will grow up thinking that being sexualized at a young age is OK. But, I will not protest the networks. I will shut off the TV. I will have to deal with the fact that the rest of the world likely has the media-warped perception of young white girls as glorified, out-of-control hedonists.