CNNs 'Black' Mis-fires

Kudos to CNN's Soledad O'Brien for parlaying clout earned from her award winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina into a much anticipated report on African Americans... I guess?

America's fascination with its African population is longstanding. New York Senator Daniel P. Moynihan made a name for himself reporting on the status of black people (1965). There was the Kerner Commission report in 1968 which, among other things reported on the disaffection black people felt with American justice. I remember that, in the late 1980s Newsweek magazine made the plight of black males a focus of a bestselling "special report." Indeed every notable talk show host from Phil Donahue to Ted Koppel has examined the "state of Black America." On the surface, such reporting comes across as genuine interest in the challenging issues facing America's foremost minority population -- Hispanics not withstanding. However, I wonder, cynically I admit, if it is not merely a curious preoccupation with how Americans of African decent are able to consistently persevere in the face of systematic racism.

O'Brien's reporting had a great flaw. At the crux of all the difficult issues facing black people was our achievement, or underachievement, as it relates to the majority racial group in the United States -- white people. [A population itself that is more varied in its ethnicity and class distinctions than blacks]. It is difficult to take issue with the Soledad O'Brien’s motives. She is as full of integrity as she is charming. Each profile started positive enough, referring to African-Americans traditions: reunions, family dinners, pursing education, and holding down fine jobs. Predictably, however, those perspectives served as a segway into what many perceive as unyielding pathologies in black America. All the traditional shortcomings were analyzed: Incarceration of black males, the vaunted "achievement gap," absentee fathers, and the newest alarm -- disproportionate (new) AIDS cases among black women. CNN's coverage had all the trappings of an in-depth exposé, but with the shallow incision of a tabloid magazine.

Black In America was billed as a thorough report on the diverse issues facing black people today, yet it perpetuated stereotypes – mostly addressing issues that liberals and bigots want to examine. O'Brien discussed the plight of black families without any historical footage, or real discussion, about the concerted efforts to hinder families from surviving since slavery. She examined black men in prison without tracing the systematic use of the penal system to maintain disproportionate rates of black male incarceration since the days of the chain gangs --when (southern) authorities used false imprisonment to create a ready labor force for public works contractors. Limited facts about the proliferation of AIDS in urban America gave the false impression that African American women are walking Petri dishes for the disease. And most troubling for me was the notion that the achievement of black children in school requires extraordinary enticements; a position that will only serve to perpetuate bigoted ideas about innate inferiority. Or that their failure is alarming only because they fall short of the achievements of (some) white children in school.

What Black In America left out was far more important that what it covered. Cheap cocaine influenced the drug economy greatly in the 1980s, but the disproportionate sentencing of black people for the same crimes committed by whites – trafficking – predisposed them to incarceration. A discussion of reparations for slavery found not light in this exposé. COINTELPRO, racial profiling, or the corporatizations of Hip Hop were lost discussions too. And should not a discussion of the underachievement of (some) African American children in school have included the disproportionate assignment of black youth, especially boys, into special education classes -- mostly for perceived behavior issues? There is reliable research on the topic.

Certainly African Americans have come far in our history as a people. The most important feature of African American sociology, however, is that despite economic stratification and diverse political orientations on everything from school vouchers to same-sex marriage, we still identify as a single people. But then again, we've never really had a choice in that...did we?