Black in America 2/Dangers of BLACK Racial Profiling.

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The other day, I wrote a piece on why I could not watch Black in America 2. I talked about how all week at the gym they had it on and I found the show to be a downer. I tried to come up with reasons why I could not watch it and the real reason hit me like a ton of bricks while me and my son were at the pool hall last night.

During the weekends, I am working on another project. We have the TV on, even though I’m not a big TV watcher….   I always have Court TV and other crime channels on. I find the shows interesting but I never thought about the subliminal message this type of programming sends, I’m often intrigued by the story lines. Shows like Gangland , 48 Hours, Forensic Files, Crime 360, Cops, documentaries about American prison life and shows like that are on ALL weekend. A majority of these shows always profile a very high percentage of Blacks committing some sort of heinous crimes, brutality, rape, being in jail, murdering a family, serial killing etc. Where I currently live there are VERY few blacks in this city so I don’t have a lot of personal interactions with blacks on a daily basis since leaving Atlanta almost a year ago.   So outside of the work I do nationally, I realized I am basically removed from my own black culture. It is true that if you don’t have personal interactions with people you can form an opinion of them that is purely based on media bias if that’s your only source of information… This is actually why I stopped watching all nightly local news 12 years ago when I lived in Los Angeles until this very day for the extreme profiling of blacks as everything negative.

I realized while I was playing pool that I had allowed myself to be brainwashed by the content of these shows after so many months. While most of these shows are factual, the content just about always portrays blacks as predators and criminals. I had to face the reality that I as a black man started to accept that concept too and I can see how whites who have no personal interactions with Blacks can easily do the same. When Black in America 2 was on and it was on during the week, when I don’t have the TV on at all and I got into that Crime 360, 48 Hours and Forensic File thinking again those shows and their concept immediately won out and asked myself what have we done wrong now? Why are we playing victim? And why do we always discount the way we treat each other? Truth is, I didn’t even give the show a chance and killed the concept before I even watched it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has done this.

I’m going to order the show Black in America 2 and sit down and watch the entire thing next weekend and let you know what I REALLY think of it after that. In addition, I’m going to find at least 2 activities to do during the week that allows me to be around my own culture while I finish my project in this city and the nature channel will be on each weekend from this point on.


3 COMMENTS

  1. those remarks you made can also be put into context with views some may have about todays black music, and radio that’s being mass marketed to us as I won’t use the mask terminology “Urban” music today. Critical and must definately food and mirror looking as community for thought.

  2. those remarks you made can also be put into context with views some may have about todays black music, and radio that’s being mass marketed to us as I won’t use the mask terminology “Urban” music today. Critical and most definately food and mirror looking as a community for thought.

    Peace…

  3. I’m pretty surprised you lump all these shows together. Especially in the case of “48 Hours” and “Forensic Files”, they seem to go out of their way to show perpetrators who are white and middle-class… or, preferably, white and rich.
    “Gangland” may be a different case entirely, or those prison lock-up shows… but if you looked at the criminals from “Forensic Files”, you’d expect 90 percent of the guys in “Lock-up” to be white.

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