CNN's Shallow Look at Black Life
by Mel Reeves
"It has become fashionable to talk about the problems of the black poor in terms of their personal failings."
Whenever folks in this country, of whatever ethnicity, have a conversation about the current state of Black America, you can be assured of one thing: the most ridiculous opinions and theories will leap from the mouths of people who would otherwise be considered intelligent. But you will seldom hear about the government's responsibility to black folks. So I watched the CNN special "Black in America" and read the blog entries on its website already knowing what was coming.
Compared to the usual TV menu, "Black in America" was worth watching, and the traffic on its website was quite interesting. But the program was also pathetically predictable. I knew that some dim white person would say, "you are victims in today's world only because you want to be." I knew there would be lots of self-flagellating black folks who would be pointing the finger at their lesser-off brothers and sisters. I knew some fool would repeat something he'd heard from another fool and give the impression that all black folks are foolish - a kind of stream-of-unconsciousness that has no place in journalism. I knew that some sister would reveal how far we have not come by telling the interviewer that she judged a potential suitor as unfit because he used "whose" when he should have written "who's," while lamenting the shortage of eligible black men.
And of course, there was the inevitable call for "personal responsibility." With presidential contender Barack Obama acting as the black-baiter-in-chief, it has become fashionable to talk about the problems of the black poor in terms of their personal failings. This is nothing more than victim-blaming despite Obama's insistence to the contrary. He knows exactly what he is doing, and he profits politically from it.
"The program was pathetically predictable."
Yet very few of those featured on the CNN broadcast, while contemplating possible solutions to the problems of Blacks in America, pointed to the elephant in the room: the US government. Black folks weren't born to fail, they were set up to fail by a government that does not care or is outright hostile.
This government only serves the interests of the rich and big business. It goes to war to open up new markets for capital, but has no fight in it when it comes to the condition of its people. And ironically, the people themselves let the government off the hook with this inordinate amount of victim blaming under the heading of personal responsibility.
Just recently over $160 billion was budgeted for the war in Iraq and trillions have already been spent. And in the meantime war profiteers are robbing the government blind. A recent General Accounting Office investigation into spending in Iraq discovered irregularities in the millions. One investigation revealed that millions of dollars had been procured without as much as an itemized invoice of what goods or services would be delivered. Yet there is not a peep about personal responsibility among these rich folks who rob us blind on a daily basis.
The government ensures that US-based oil corporations like Exxon/Mobil, Conoco Phillips, Chevron, and Total secure Iraqi contracts - satisfying the rationale for starting the war in the first place, as some close to the administration have admitted. The government acts as if it exists for the sole purpose of protecting and promoting big corporations, but tells us working folks to count on the free market to straighten out our problems.
President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the post-World War Two G.I. Bill, and Lyndon Johnson's great expansion of governmental services rewrote the social contract in the United States. However, it has been downhill ever since for poor people in need of material support and Blacks striving for elementary justice.
"The government acts as if it exists for the sole purpose of protecting and promoting big corporations."
Years ago, Martin Luther King put forward a reasonable solution to the problem of poverty and disenfranchisement in America when he called for a "Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged" or what he termed the "veterans of the long siege of denial."
King's idea's time has come. A Bill of Rights would address those issues raised in the CNN special:
- Provide all resources needed to make quality public education for all a reality
- Provide quality universal health care for all
- Create jobs by rebuilding the failing infrastructure dikes, bridges, roads, etc.
- Reduce prison population by providing treatment centers for the drug addicted
- Create equity in criminal sentencing; eliminate all sentencing disparities
- Provide more government grants for higher education
- Make institutionalized discrimination a punishable crime
- Provide subsidized housing for all those who work
- Eliminate criminal records as barriers to employment; exceptions where applicable
- Hold police accountable for misconduct
CNN's producers pretend that the problems afflicting Black America are either beyond solution or rooted in the cultural failings of Black people, themselves. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Black America that large doses of justice, political power and money can't cure.
Mel Reeves is an activist living in Miami. He can be contacted at mellaneous19@yahoo.com.
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