I’m getting increasingly angry watching this “special report”. The focus is pretty much all on the negative so far and for the most part on black men. The short segments about women were focused on family and again… men. Viewers are left with the overall impression that black women only exist as mothers mostly single mothers at that. I would love to know what percentage of the report showed successful independent black women because I’m getting the impression that all the people who have risen above their “difficulties” are men.

I can’t stand CNN anyway but sadly it is my only TV source for news. (Greek news programmes are toe-curlingly awful). I guess I didn’t expect anything better from them anyway ! I put it down to another disappointing “special” (read shallow, sensationalist and ambiguous) report from CNN

I was wondering about that. I viewed bits and pieces of it, and as a non African American I couldn’t see it as a very worthy or comprehensive report.
Throwing statistics into a bunch of film they want to call a special report is really not a special report at all. CNN has gotten progressively worse over the last four years, I rarely watch it any more
though I have watched their Darfur coverage.

I haven’t seen it, but it seems like the sort of idea that could be done well, if they were very, very careful about it, and if not, could easily end up, as a friend of mine characterized it, “really [feeling] like ‘A Visitor’s Guide to Black People’.”

For me it wasn’t that they showed that there are problems because let’s face it they exist. It is the bodies that they didn’t see fit to cover in this special that are dealing with multiple areas of stigmatizatioin…where were the GLBT, the disabled, why don’t their bodies count?

I just went on rant last night after watching a bit of this awful, awful “special report”. And since I only watched a minute of it, I could have missed the part where they talked about the diversity within our community. About how there are problems, but there are also solutions. About community building and activism. About how being black in America doesn’t just mean one thing, or one experience.

Did I miss that part?

Weird. I just watched a “trailer” here, having nothing else to go by: http://afronerd.blogspot.com/2008/07/dont-forget-tonights-and-tomorrow .html?referer=sphere_related_content

“most black people have not been arrested, most black people are not poor”

“there are so many african american men that are doing the right thing…those are the stories that you’re missing.”

How many pieces are there to the special report? Is it broken broken up into “chapters”? I don’t have CNN currently. I assume this trailer is jumping back and forth over various topics, but am not sure. Watching it gives the impression that there are different sections, including “Black Men”, “Black Women & the Family”, etc. Did the actual piece not work out that way? Not questioning folks interpretations, just wondering if there is more to it than what has been viewed so far.

What y’all talking about? There was plenty of talk of diversity in black communities. Y’see, some of us are dark-skinned, and some of us are light-skinned!

Seriously tho, I agree, Renee and DD. Apparently to CNN “Black in America” equals “heterosexual, able-bodied men.” And sometimes women. But only, as Renee points out in her post on this, if they’re there in the service of men.

@smadin: “Visitor’s Guide to Black People”

Ha. That cracks me up! And that’s another thing that sorta bugs me about this. I can’t shake the feeling of a “ooh, there’s about to be black president, so we better teach everyone about black people” vibe coming from CNN. But yeah, I definitely think you can do something like this well. That’s why I think so many black bloggers are frustrated.

I thought it was depressing as it focused on blacks as if we are an exhibit in a big top circus. It has the connation that our blackness is the problem. when the real problem is racism and prejudice against blacks. The show focused on the effect but not the cause and therefore it was biased. I know the statistics and that does not mean that represents me as a black woman. I would not chose to date a “white” man just because there is a “shortage” of brothers. Love is love and it is colorless. It is a private and individual decision. As are the choices that individuals made in their lives that may have landed them in jail, on drugs, pregnant without a husband (several times). Choices made without knowledge are still choices. The consequences are colorless too.

Black in America,

As a young journalist who grew up in a middle class neighborhood, I am a bit taken aback by this series. YES i do commend CNN for putting on the documentary, but at the same time, if you are going to do something, do it RIGHT. Groundbreaking research? NEWS FLASH this is NOT news! In fact, countless people already knew that the black community lacked many good fathers, that successful black women find it hard to get a successful black man, and that getting a job is TWICE as hard than it is for a white person to get one.

Although i have barely reached 20, this summer i interned in a newsroom with a newspaper, where i was blatantly discriminated! I am angered to have gone through this experience, and then watch a show that just told me things i already knew. Why not try offering solutions to my community, instead of pinpointing our problems?!

Also, why in the documentary only the poor or the rich were shown? That was NOT a good representation of MYSELF or my FAMILY. If you are going to touch on a topic, cover all your basis. I honestly expected more from this series, but like a previous comment said, “it’s a start.”

Everybody hates to have the finger pointed and if you want to get a black person angry, TELL THEM THE TRUTH. I am an African American SINGLE mother because of the ignorance of black men. They have really begun to take advantage of the women to men ratio and now aids is rampant in our community. If Black men had ANY respect for us they would not continue to do this to us. You would think that any man who has a mother or sisters he loves and cares for, would do the same for the women they involve themselves with. Black People WAKE UP!!! We have crime in our neighborhoods, aids in our communities, and to many of our children left by their father’s so they are able to pursue their own selfish needs. Too many men are allowing their children to be raised by other men who have no blood ties to them. This leads to the molestation of our beautiful babies and who is the first to be blamed? The single black mother who has no idea of how she herself is to be treated because her own father was absent in her life. It a freaking cycle that we as black people just don’t get. Women are so desperate for love and affection that they are willing to SHARE a man just to have one. HIV people!! There is no prescription to cure it, yet we continue to lie down with these men in the name of LOVE and get up either pregnant and alone, or sick and alone. Black people want to blame EVERYBODY for their short comings, when truth is WE are the reason for our failure. If we worked together, band together and pooled our resources we too would not have to wait on anybody to hire our black men, we could do it ourselves. The new blacks (Mexicans Legal or Not) have taken our place and our jobs. They stick together a help one another, when all we do is hate on one another. We need to learn to pick our battles and shut the hell up sometimes if there is nothing worth being said. You want to anger a black person, tell them the truth. We prefer to hear lies and this is why our women have the highest HIV/AIDS rate than any other race. God gave all of us common sense and yet we do not use it. Please wake up and stop leaving these babies in single parent homes, and leaving our women with disease. Pull your pants up and go to school. Stop trying to be these hard core rappers who have WIVES at home who they love and care for. Stop spending your money on clothes and shoes, while your babies are at homes with no heat. We as black people need to do better. You would think at this point we would be tired of people throwing our failure in our face, yet we have not improved. I watched the special report and I agreed and disagreed. This is how society views us and we would rather not watch the show,or complian that it’s not fair. We have yet to sit don’t and allow what we hear to soak in and actually make the effort to do better…….

“New Blacks taking our jobs”? I have no idea what that means. You can not mean the most menial jobs in the land? In my city, the crab market is suffering because there is no one to pick them. The newspaper stated the job used to be dominated by African-American women and their daughters and grandaughters, but educational opportunities has afforded them bigger and better dreams and lifestyles. Meanwhile, the state of VA has not signed papers allowing Hispanic workers work visas. So now… that market suffers. If this is the job for you, come to Hampton VA. Pick crabs for a living.

Memo to CNN…

by matttbastard

When embarking on a Landmark Multimedia Event™ called ‘Black in America’, it’s best not to risk your black-people-love-us-cred by, er, credulously citing avowed racists as experts on teh Negroes.  Just a thought.
N…