I’ve been enjoying a British/French police series set on a fictional Caribbean island. (Welcome to Paradise.) The central character is a weird white buttoned up Brit fish-out-of-water cop, but all the other police are black – and smart and hard working, sometimes in unexpected ways. Not about American black people, but refreshing, anyway.

Great article Fred,

My gf and I were talking about the positive images on TV, movies, music about Black Folks n the mainstream media: Absent except for the poor Black guys helped by the nice White man/woman (The help type)
The rest are violent, thugs, pimps for Afro-Americans, Party-hard/Weed smokers for Afro-Caribbeans, Tribal Warriors/ Superstitious for Africans. I am not dismissing problems in Afro communities but we can attest that stereotypes on Black people had evolved after Jim Crow and colonial time, from the Savage/uncivilized Negro who should be taught and be whitened to the Violent, Indolent Negro. No conspiracy, just an evolution of the racial imaginary !

and at what point do we hold people accountable for assuming an entire nation of people is represented by what one sees in a rap music video? At what point do we address that lack of critical thinking? Does everything we do need to be constantly geared towards the obtuse so that they don’t make the wrong generalizations?. Get rid of negative images in gangster rap (again I’m not saying that’s a bad idea) and there will be something else that comes along to justify the dehumanization of African American men, because it is inherent in the power structure to do so, as has been demonstrated historically. Which is why I believe in focusing the discussion more on that larger issue.

And sometimes it’s easier to tell people to pull up their pants and stop using the N than have a conversation about those real root causes of the problems

As I said in the article there is and has been a debate in the African American community about the images in gangsta rap, and no where am I calling for people to ignore that problem. Also, lets talk about how those images are being distributed to Kenya and Ethiopia. White people are still involved in that process.

And I think you still need to put the phenomenon of Africans having negative opinions about African Americans based on rap music in a broader historical and social context. Because Africans holding negative opinions about African Americans as lazy, shiftless, and not trying to help themselves predates rap music…I also have anecdotal evidence of that. It has to do with the way that colonialism and Eurocentrism have impacted people of African descent in Africa and across the diaspora

If the negative images that Whites create of Black people harm us, why should we assume that the negative images that we create of ourselves have only a negligible effect on the way we are profiled? We certanly did not start the fire, but must we constantly throw fuel on it, enabling it to rage out of control? At some point, those fueling the fire can be nearly as guilty as those that started it in the first place.

I found myself online debating with men, women and immigrants on this subject (and that was just the black folks) about why Don’s comments were poorly framed and incomplete. The personal responsibility frame is no “silver bullet” to solve any communities problems – especially those of Black America. Structural racial inequities and policy go hand in hand and have shaped this nation for centuries. It is by dismantling the structural barriers and building effective inclusive policies that we will see the biggest gains for communities of color. Yeah we have work to do internally but Don gave only part of the perspective and analysis. We can debate about how large of a part his five point play but in no way did he go deep enough in using his platform. Not to mention giving Bill O’Reilly any validity just seemed like a ploy to make some headlines and grow his conservative base/brand … I wonder would he publicly agree with a staunch anti-gay figure who partially understands global warming but does not go far enough? I think not but that is another post entirely.

I agree wholeheartedly Karen and I wanted to add an additional note but the post was already getting to long. I was born into a working poor family, and after my parents divorced and I was left in the care of my bipolar paranoid schizophrenic mother, the situation became dire. And yes, I persevered and got good grades and studies for the SAT and did well on the culturally biased standardized tests. I did all those things because I wanted a better life as an adult.

But even with that I still nonetheless had certain advantages that others in my situation would not have had. I had older brothers and sisters who had or were attending college. I had a guidance counselor who devoted herself almost full time to working on my college and scholarship applications. I had positive reinforcement for academic achievement. Those things, which were available to me largely because of who I happened to be born to and where, were determinative of my educational outcomes as much as my own “efforts” or ambition or discipline.