Black in America

[sensitiveguy]

Originally Posted by sista

BlackAmericaStudy.com

here's a 'different' study done by Radio One.... no doubt the findings are obviously NOT what CNN would've wanted....

Good info.

[starstruck]

I watched. It was decent but it should have focused on the middle class more.

[TUCKER]

Originally Posted by starstruck

I watched. It was decent but it should have focused on the middle class more.

I didn't watch it, where was the focus?

[starstruck]

Originally Posted by TUCKER

I didn't watch it, where was the focus?

Lower income and rich but no in between. They talked about many topics briefly but there wasn't enough time to elaborate on anything. It wasn't bad so you should watch it.

[sista]

Originally Posted by sensitiveguy

Good info.

think that's good, peep this:

CNN Uses Racial Extremist as Source for Its 'Black in America' Series
What is CNN doing interviewing the founder of an online discussion forum that promotes selective breeding of the human species?

As part of its ongoing "Black in America" project, CNN posted a story to its website earlier this week titled "Could an Obama presidency hurt black Americans?" Credited to CNN correspondent John Blake, the piece quotes the wit and wisdom of Steve Sailer, identified only as "a columnist for The American Conservative magazine."

Specifically, the CNN story quotes a column by Sailer first published last year in which he opined that Obama offers voters "White guilt repellent."

"So many whites want to be able to say, 'I'm not one of them, those bad whites. Hey, I voted for a black guy for president,'" Sailer wrote.

What the CNN article fails to note is that in addition to writing columns and movie reviews for The American Conservative, Sailer is the founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, a neo-eugenics online discussion forum where right-wing journalists and race scientists have promoted selective breeding of the human species. He also writes frequently for the anti-immigrant hate site Vdare.com, named for the first white child born in America, and runs a website, isteve.com.

Sailer's website is rife with primitive stereotypes. On it, Sailer mocks professional golfer Annika Sorenstam for having well-developed muscles and claims that Asian men have a hard time finding dates because they look "less masculine" than other men.

Last January, on the hate site vdare.com, Sailer labeled Obama a "wigger."

"He's a remarkably exotic variety of the faux African-American, but a wigger nonetheless," Sailer wrote. "Even genetically, Obama, whose East African descent is apparent in his unusual features, has only a distant relationship to the West Africans who are the ancestors of almost all African-Americans." To illustrate his point, Sailer used photos of Obama side-by-side with Jesse Jackson and the rapper Ludacris, "both of whom have conventional West African features."

Assessing the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, Sailer wrote, "The plain fact is that they [black Americans] tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society."

This isn't the only time in recent history that CNN has turned to an unabashed bigot for commentary on controversial issues in America while cloaking the source's full identity.

In October 2006, CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta reported on a study by J. Phillpe Rushton that purported to show that men, on average, are more intelligent than women. Gupta identified Rushton only as a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. Since 2002, Rushton has been the head of the Pioneer Fund, a pro-eugenics foundation that funds the research of academic racists like Jared Taylor and Rushton, who himself has received over $1 million in Pioneer grants. Among Rushton's findings are that on average blacks have larger genitals, breasts and buttocks, characteristics that, according to Rushton's "research," have an inverse relationship to brain size and, thus, intelligence.

Then last April, CNN host Paula Zahn invited white supremacist James Edwards to participate in a live on-air panel discussion of "self-segregation" in America. Edwards, a self-proclaimed crusader for the white race, is the co-founder of the Political Cesspool, a Memphis, Tenn.-based AM radio show whose guest lineup is a rogue's gallery of prominent figures on the radical right, including former Klan leader David Duke, anti-Semitic attorney Edgar Steele and the neo-Nazi teen singing duo Prussian Blue.

On that occasion, CNN identified Edwards rather sparingly as a "talk radio show host."

[sensitiveguy]

Damn! Uh, whatever happened to FULL disclosure of their sources?

[sista]

another critique:

CNN’s Shallow Look at Black Life

African America - Culture


30 July 2008

by Mel Reeves

CNN went down a predictable path with its "Black in America" special, providing prime time play to "lots of self-flagellating black folks pointing the finger at their lesser-off brothers and sisters." Barack Obama has given the all-clear to wholesale badmouthing of poor African Americans, who are treated as some kind of clinical problem to be studied and acted upon. "Personal responsibility" is the watchword - for Blacks only. "Yet there is not a peep about personal responsibility among the rich folks who rob us blind on a daily basis." The not-ready-for-mainstream-TV truth is, "There is nothing wrong with Black America that large doses of justice, political power and money can't cure.


"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.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

[jls]

Originally Posted by angeladc

dad gummit!!! i knew there was something i had missed on yesterday.i didn't get a chance to watch it.

I'm sure it'll be on YouTube pretty soon

[jls]

Originally Posted by starstruck

I watched. It was decent but it should have focused on the middle class more.

Thank you. It seemed only the po' folks got attention.