But the arguments you’ve been making concern BET programming and it’s targeted audience, not it’s name.
If we did away with niche stations and through some miraculous feat, forced mainstream networks to have programs that matched the viewing public’s demographic profile, that means black people would represent only 13% of the characters on TV. But if people enjoy watching programs that feature people that look like themselves, doing things that culturally resonate with them, why should they not have the opportunity to watch a station that features those kind of programs more than 13% of the time? And how diverse can portrayals be if only 13% of the airtime is given to black people? And how likely is it that 13% of the shows with black leads will be shown during peak prime time hours?
So what if the dang thing is called BET. Lifetime also dubs itself “Television for Women”, but rarely do I see any complaints about this grave injustice to men.
There is if the goal is diversity. Why should we have two audiences who never see each other’s programming and never get to know each other? Put them all on one mainstream channel and they’ll advance cultural understanding.
You’re assuming that non-blacks don’t watch BET. I assure you they do, and blacks watch mainstream channels too. It’s a shocking idea, I know. But all those hip hop/R&B videos broadcasted on BET would attract few advertising dollars if the only folks tuning in were African-American.
Well, there’s no right to to have a show on NBC, and, as detailed above, efforts to hammer through some sort of Television Civil Rights Act would almost certainly do more harm than good.
No, and no. There are films marketed specifically to black folks, of course, but they get shown by any theater that thinks people will show up and pay for it. Seems to work just fine.
Call me a cynic if you wish, but instead of cultural understanding, I predict, in the event of mandatory programming, minority-in-name-only minority programming (does the NFL or NBA count?), or minority programming that goes unwatched and is crammed into the least desirable time slots. It’s not comparable to having diverse schools, changing a channel is just too easy.
Further, I’m of the school that laws that can’t be meaningfully enforced are worse than no law at all. Consider that the CRA covers race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Presumably, a new Television CRA would also cover sexual orientation.
In terms of denying service, that’s simple enough to enforce, and it works.
In terms of mandatory programming? It’d be a nightmare. You’d have to enforce programming for, at a minimum: whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians (and lumping all of them into The Asian Show wouldn’t go over so well); different skin shades; the various forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, neo-paganism, animism; both genders; and every national origin. It’s just totally unworkable. Do blacks get 13% of air time, and Muslims 1%? Do the 1% Muslim shows also need to be proportional to the gender and racial breakdown of American Muslims?
How do you define whether a show “counts” toward its category? The cast? The writers? The producers? The content?
But should there be a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of race when applying to have a show on NBC?
I agree, but let’s keep pushing - what if theatres were mostly white-owned, and they didn’t show “black” films, and said it’s just because they don’t make money compared to white films because blacks are a minority? That’s just a business decision, right?
Again, I’m just throwing these ideas out to explore them, not to argue any particular point. Thanks for playing along.
Yes, I agree that cable TV ended the domination of whites in TV media. It’s not really a problem any more. I am old enough to remember when there were only five channels (NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and the random independent channel that ran syndicated reruns and religious programming all day).
(I also remember when - this is going to blow your mind if you’re not over age 30 or so - you had to GET UP and walk to the TV to change the channel. But with only five choices, it didn’t matter much.)
To be clear, I’m not screaming about BET. I’m just exploring why others might.
So let me ask you - would you scream about a channel called “WET?” If a station said it’s just “branding and trying to reach a sizeable audience” - white people - would you scream, or would screaming be justified?
Or should we just give up and acknowledge that the country western channel is basically the white network?
I’m also confident that there is someone out there in the world who thinks it ought to be done. But they aren’t here on this forum.
Now, I also think that your criticism applies to many other policies, like minority set-asides or certain AA policies for federal contracts, college admission, jobs, etc. too. They create as many problems as they attempt to fix.
The hypothetical was media companies “us[ing]the publicly-owned airwaves to completely shut out black voices or actors.” That’s way beyond mere white-oriented programming. I would have a problem with that, because I want a variety of content, not a cartel serving a tiny portion of Americans (those that want white-only, or at least no-blacks-allowed, television).
If such a cartel seized the licenses for use of the public airwaves, I might ask my Senators to pressure the FCC to cancel their licenses.
Maybe if people in protected classes were systematically turned away at the door, but the process of deciding which TV pilot is likely to yield the best ratings is so subjective (and inexact, as NBC will tell you), I can’t see a role for the government in trying to decide whether NBC just didn’t think a pitch would make money, or if they just didn’t want a show with a lot of black people.
Right. I wouldn’t see a problem with that. Theater owners shoudn’t be obligated to lose money by showing unpopular films. Note that under Title II of the CRA, businesses gain money by being disallowed to discriminate (and their peers can’t get an edge by discriminating, to appeal to a racist majority). The law doesn’t require a restaurant to have curry (or black beans or schnitzel or…) on the menu so as to appeal to all possible protected classes equally, because that’d be a nightmare to regulate, and would be destructive to the businesses. The CRA isn’t.
No problem. If I can’t support my ideas, I should change to different ideas.
That’s before my time, certainly, I’ve only known the cable & remote-control era.
Maybe, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish, and belongs in its own thread.
I agree. Still, people do often complain about low representation (or unfavorable portrayals) of minorities in TV and movies. They don’t usually call for government action, but they do ask for justification from the networks.
But there have been cases like that. I recall a case where a nightclub was sued for playing white-oriented music whenever the management thought the crowd was “too black,” hoping blacks would leave. I might be able to find a citation. That’s kind of similar. (I can see it backfiring - playing really really white music like “Afternoon Delight” or Karen Carpenter, would send everyone running for the door. :D).
That applies to me too. I’m just playing devil’s advocate to tease these things out with thoughtful intelligent people like you.
Well, then, I can tell you that there was a time when minorities had little access to TV, or the movies, and were often only portrayed in a negative way. I agree that a law regulating that would be unworkable, but one factor in changing it was the looming threat that the government might actually try. Much like the movie business created the ratings system to head off some kind of regulation.
Also, we didn’t have those new-fangled cellphone thingies - when you wanted to make a call, you either did it at home or you found a pay phone and put in a quarter. And we rolled our car windows up by hand! You kids today don’t know what it was like!
Same here. I’ve read stuff such as “Sorry, I’m not going to bother about issues men might have” (on the basis that men have it so much better than women), but indeed not much on this board.
And that’s totally valid. I had a thread a little while ago where I complained about how monolithic the cultural attitudes on TV could be, using the specific example of how hunting was typically portrayed. It’s not just a matter of race; because American TV is the product of a fairly insular culture (which is overwhelmingly white, male, and college educated), based in just two cities, and seeking a broad audience, there’s just a general cluelessness about anything outside the white, male, educated, New York/L.A. world. It’s getting better, and as access to distribution gets easier and easier, thanks to things like Hulu and Netflix, change will accelerate, but there’s plenty of complain about now.
Was this the case? If so, it was dismissed, with an argument similar to what I’ve been saying:
Since it was dismissed, I won’t have the opportunity to read how the court grappled with which music is black-oriented, and which is white-oriented. Too bad.
Thank you.
The government does like poorly-thought-out, headline-grabbing legislation, that’s true.
Since my parents are weirdly averse to them (they still don’t have cell phones), I didn’t have a cell phone until I was 18, so I can relate to this one, somewhat…mainly, I just bummed my friends’ phones.
That’s barbaric!
Fair, so I’ll rephrase: I personally am not prepared for an AA debate at this time.
I would be alarmed by a channel called WET the same reason I would be alarmed by a channel call Heterosexual TV or English TV. There has never been a time in the industrial world that whites have not been overrepresented in the media; same with straights and anglophones. Given the voluminous airtime already given to white people and white-dominated interests, it would be superfluous to have a channel that specializes in what can already be readily found on the major networks. And so I would question the motives of any broadcaster who felt that such a channel needed to exist. It would smack of separatism not inclusion.
Yeah, we should grow up and acknowledge that. Anyone who gripes about BET because its name makes it clear whom its target audience is rather than choosing a cutesy handle like Spike is essentially announcing to the world that they have a very rudimentary understanding of race politics. I’m not mincing words here because the truth needs to be said.
This discussion reminds me of when I was the in the 8th grade and a white kid caught me reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy. “That’s racist!” he said, apparently in an kneejerk attempt to shame me for reading a book about black experiences. I guess I was supposed to only read stories in which race was never mentioned or involved fictionalized worlds where racism didn’t exist. My suspicion is that because he didn’t have any books about white people struggling against racial oppression, his reptilian brain felt it was unfair that blacks could have such books. Nevermind that whites haven’t had to struggle against racial oppression (at least in the US) and so it would make little sense for books like that to exist. Two parts self-entitlement mixed with one part ignorance and a heaping tablespoon (or three) of anti-black bias is what I attribute this reaction to, and it will only go away when people call it out for what it is.
But why would something alarm you just for being “superfluous” In fact, it might be considered refreshing honesty - “we cater mostly to white audiences, and we admit it.” And since there’s now a BET, who can really complain? Black programming has access to televisions now too.
Well, yes, that’s the real concern.
Just to clarify - are you criticizing the BET name for having a reference to race? I didn’t quite understand your comment.
Okay, but would you think a book called “White Boy” is racist? You might laugh if it was about a white person’s struggle with racial oppression, but suppose it was just about a white person’s views and experiences on race?
And many whites most certainly have struggled against racial oppression - by other whites against blacks. They weren’t, and shouldn’t be, just bystanders. They weren’t victims of it, but they may have something to say about it. And actually, a white man who dared to stand up for blacks in the deep South of yesterday could suffer for it, so they have a story to tell. But that’s an aside.
(And perhaps the kid said the book is racist because he didn’t know it was by and about a black author. Or just says that kind of thing without knowing what it means).
