I’ve been glued to the TV the past two nights watching CNN’s Black in America.  Wanna know what I thought about it? It was … Eh.  I guess I live Black in America everyday, so I just had a series of duh moments.  I was thinking, Did Soledad really need to interview folks to learn all this stuff.  Sh*t, she’s living Black in America every day she already knew this stuff.

So I’m thinking, who is her target audience?  I mean, there were lots of educated Black folks watching, Atlanta had watch parties at all the best restaurants so that people could get their drink on and see the show.  And I was invited to at least one House party where the focus would have been on the show.

But as I’ve listened to the radio for the past few days, I keep hearing that people didn’t learn anything knew, and that they weren’t surprised by anything they saw.  So, educated Blacks already knew what was up. So again, I ask, who was the target audience?

Then I think about the commercials that were playing, and they were all so multi-cultural.  Little Black and African kids sharing McD’s French fries, Black, Asian, Latino business people dancing as they go to hotels, colored people using computers and riding in airplanes and Benzs.  These commercials were not (for the most part) hawking cheap stuff.  And they all were directly targeted at Black viewers. So does that mean that CNN wanted to show Black America what it is like to be Black in America?  It appears so.  And that is sad.

It ain’t black folks that need to see what its like to be Black in America.  We already know about being raised by single parents, we already know about being the working poor, we already know that the leading cause of death for young Black females is AIDS, and that so many successful Black women can’t find successful black men to date because so many Black men are in prison.  We already know that Black people die at a faster rate than whites, and that our kids do worse in school than every other nationality.

And I bet you that Black America could also tell you a little bit about what it’s like to be white in America.  I know a little bit about white privilege (I could also tell you about straight privilege, but that is for another day).  I’m not saying that all white people are rich and healthy and smart (I know better than that.  I taught 1^st graders where all of them, the blacks, whites and Hispanics were all sickly, poor and hungry.)  But I am well aware that it is more likely that blacks will die quickly, in poverty, and in a lower socio-economic bracket. 

So I wonder, why was CNN targeting a Black audience?  And why wasn’t Bush and every member of Congress fed-exed an f*cking copy of this?  The issues that were discussed during Black in America, for the most part, are policy issues. These issues have to do with access to quality housing, jobs, food, education, opportunities.  It kills me that so many people live in a cycle of poverty, dirt, dumbness, and death.

 We have to help people, we have to help each other, and if we don’t then the shame does not lie with those that suffer.  It lies with the rest of us.