Comments on: Media Muscle? http://brainmunchie.com/2008/07/26/media-muscle/ ...because it's food for thought Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:31:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Bronze Trinity http://brainmunchie.com/2008/07/26/media-muscle/comment-page-1/#comment-479 Bronze Trinity Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:02:15 +0000 http://brainmunchie.com/2008/07/26/media-muscle/#comment-479 I think that the motives were probably because of the MLK anniversary but I also think that "Was this to subconsciously cause a connection between the ills of Black America and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee?" is a good question. Even if this was not the intention, I think that a lot of people might draw this conclusion, that a Black man can't be president because we have some sort of pathology. I think that the program missed the mark because they marketed it as showing the world "what its like to be Black in America". To me that is something psychological or philosophical, not actually about how much money we make, our health, or whether we get married. It should have been more about what we think. Their documentary was more like a report on the "state of Black America" based on statistics. I think that they actually chose a bunch of census statistics where Black people do worse than White people and chose to report on only those issues! It would have been better to put things in context showing how things are now compared to in the past. If they did that then there would actually be a lot of improvements. Thats the problem with this Eurocentric habit of showing White people as "the norm" against which all others are compared. Yes, compared to White people we don't fair as well as they do (if thats what people actually want to strive for). But compared to Black people in the past, today we are probably doing a lot better. In some ways things are worse, but I think there are so many improvements that the show could have been 50% positive and 50% negative instead of about 20% positive and 80% negative like it was in the program. I've discussed more of this on my blog if you want to visit :) I think that the motives were probably because of the MLK anniversary but I also think that “Was this to subconsciously cause a connection between the ills of Black America and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee?” is a good question. Even if this was not the intention, I think that a lot of people might draw this conclusion, that a Black man can’t be president because we have some sort of pathology.

I think that the program missed the mark because they marketed it as showing the world “what its like to be Black in America”. To me that is something psychological or philosophical, not actually about how much money we make, our health, or whether we get married. It should have been more about what we think.

Their documentary was more like a report on the “state of Black America” based on statistics. I think that they actually chose a bunch of census statistics where Black people do worse than White people and chose to report on only those issues! It would have been better to put things in context showing how things are now compared to in the past. If they did that then there would actually be a lot of improvements. Thats the problem with this Eurocentric habit of showing White people as “the norm” against which all others are compared. Yes, compared to White people we don’t fair as well as they do (if thats what people actually want to strive for). But compared to Black people in the past, today we are probably doing a lot better. In some ways things are worse, but I think there are so many improvements that the show could have been 50% positive and 50% negative instead of about 20% positive and 80% negative like it was in the program.
I’ve discussed more of this on my blog if you want to visit :)

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