Ah, yes, the immortal question, which is worse: having those special things, or needing those special things?
The reason that these special things exist is because there still is discrimination, there still is hate. If the blacks (or any others, btw) were to give up their “special things” and assimilate with the mainstream, not only will they have to conform to different and uncomfortable images forieng to their culture, they will also meet up with resistance, with people who do their damndest to keep them out.
At some point, we will become a society that holds no bias whatsoever to people of other cultures, races, sexual orientations, religions, etc. Unfortunately, not only are we very far from that today, it is doubtful that our grandchildren will live to see it.
So let them have their BET, and work with them and others to create understanding and acceptance, and then hopefully our descendents will find themselves in a better world.
Cervantes
Wally lived by himself, had few friends, and most people avoided him at all costs. One day, while lying on the sofa, the phone rang, and Wally was suprised to find himself talking to God.
What’s the problem? Comedy Central limits their potential entertainment as does the Sci-Fi channel.
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I think people also want to see something they can relate to. I don’t have a cite but I recall seeing the most popular shows among whites and the most popular show among blacks some time in the 90’s. Of the top 10 on both sides they only shared one program.
So there are differences in program selections.
I don’t think racism is the proper word. I think most people go with what they’re used to. I bet most of the writers are white so they write about white characters. I don’t think it has any malevolent purpose though.
No, not offensivre. Blacks (like, 9% of US pop) are a niche market, whites (like 80%) aren’t.
The BET demographic isn’t really black people, it’s people interested in black entertainment, mainly music, also sitcoms. A significant part of hip hop and RnB listeners aren’t black, probably a majority. Same goes (to a lesser extent) with even gospel. (Shows like Martin are for some bizzare reason popular with trendy people in Sweden.)
3)Discrimination has nothing to do with it. African-Americans are an ethnic group, not a class. Total “racial” equality will not make BET less attractive.
“I guess what bothers me overall is that it seems like minority groups want total equality, yet also want special “things” (pageants, clubs, channels, whatever) set aside for them. I know that there have historically been many such things that excluded minorities, but I think it would be better to eliminate all such “things” based on race than to reserve minority ones to make up for historical problems. It seems unfair that minorities get to participate in mainstream events AND get to have their own.”
How do you figure BET, pageants constitute special privileges in any way whatsoever?
Is he a troll perhaps? Seems a little too unreasonable - for someone not (as it appears) hateful that is.
No, not offensivre. Blacks (like, 9% of US pop) are a niche market, whites (like 80%) aren’t.
The BET demographic isn’t really black people, it’s people interested in black entertainment, mainly music, also
sitcoms. A significant part of hip hop and RnB listeners aren’t black, probably a majority. Same goes (to a lesser
extent) with even gospel. (Shows like Martin are for some bizzare reason popular with trendy people in Sweden.)
3)Discrimination has nothing to do with it. African-Americans are an ethnic group, not a class. Total “racial”
equality will not make BET less attractive.
“I guess what bothers me overall is that it seems like minority groups want total equality, yet also want special
“things” (pageants, clubs, channels, whatever) set aside for them. I know that there have historically been many
such things that excluded minorities, but I think it would be better to eliminate all such “things” based on race
than to reserve minority ones to make up for historical problems. It seems unfair that minorities get to
participate in mainstream events AND get to have their own.”
How do you figure BET, pageants constitute special privileges in any way whatsoever?
Is he a troll perhaps? Seems a little too unreasonable - for someone not (as it appears) hateful that is.
Considering that blacks make up about 15% of the US population, it’s retarded to see blacks on almost every channel. More than 15% of channels. Including BET, they’re on damn near every channel I watch. They scream and cry when they don’t get a part in a TV show or movie. They threaten “LAW SUIT” whenever they don’t get there way. Playing the racial cards is all they do. Watch a white try & pull that. :eek:
P.S. Last I check the black population of 12% and shrinking. Maybe, with any kind of luck, the black people will dissappear altogether and you’ll never have to deal with uppity black people again.
I’ve onluy half read this thread. Hmmm. I dn’t care one way or the other about the WET or BET channels we have out there now. I really enjoy Univision, on the rare occaiisions when I get ot wathc it. I just wish we’d get a lot more variety. I think we need at leatst two Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, German, French, Spanish, um, lessee, whatever other countires I’ve missed so we can learn a little something about the trashy shows other cultrues are watchin’. [giggle] Of coures, it’d be an added bonus if there was actually some decent shows mixedup in schedules. I’m confoused. Why is this such a damn big issue anyways? IIRC, ain’t we moving in the direction–if we ain’t there already–of having access to hundreds of channels anyway? If we have so many channels, then there should be a variety of programming out there. If you don’t want to watch X channel, then don’t. Hmpfh. Ain’t no debate here, as near as I can tell.
I wanted to ask a question that this thread has raised. It was mentioned that segregated TV is a sitcom phenomenon. That makes me question why there are several prominent black roles in dramas, while comedies remain segregated (there are “white” sitcoms and “black” sitcoms, and the two don’t mix very successfully).
I have some theories, but I’m not sure what to think of them.
Comedies need to make us comfortable as a requirement to be successful. Whites are not yet comfortable with a lot of blacks hanging around and blacks are not yet comfortable with a lot of whites hanging around (in their comedies).
Dramas are workplace centered. Comedies are home or family centered (even workplace comedies are just surrogate families). We find it “realistic” that workplaces are integrated, but it still seems artificial to have integrated families or social lives.
Blacks and whites can agree on the dramatic, but not the comedic. There is still a big divide in what whites and blacks find funny. Or, perhaps we need to be able to relate to situations in order to laugh at them (or tune in next week to laugh at them), and we don’t yet relate to the same situations.
Blacks in dramas are not very black. I don’t watch TV enough to know if this is true, but it occurs to me that there are a few quite excellent black actors in dramas, but the characters are very race neutral. Does Dr. Benton on E.R. have to be black? Is he a black character, or is it a black actor (and I’m not picking on the character or actor in particular, he just sprang to mind).
Blacks in dramas play stereotypes. The black characters I can think of are all very similar, predictable roles. There seem to be two or three black stock characters that recur (not that there aren’t white stock characters, too). Why not stock black comedic characters? Perhaps they’re more clearly offensive?
I don’t think that we all should enjoy watching the same things. The only problem that I worry about being “fixed” is that I have this nagging suspicion that there are some very good black actors that I am not seeing, and instead I have to see the aforementioned David Schwimmer.
kg m²/s²
PS: Wouldn’t I feel bad if David Schwimmer read this message board?
I don’t know how much this comes into play, but from my experience, “black” comedies are more likely to have regular white characters than “white” comedies, though usually serving in the goofy, clueless token white capacity.
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Interesting hypothesis. I think you might be on to something.
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I think this might be the case. I know a white guy who cracks up along with the laugh track on Friends but thinks all the programming on UPN sucks. Personally, I can’t stand Friends and I never got the hype over Seinfeld but I do like shows like Martin and Living Single.
However, there is cross-over humor. The Simpson’s is watched by both black and white audiences. Chris Rock isn’t just another “black comic”, he’s everybody’s favorite comic. Shows like My Wife and Kids and I and The Bernie Mac Show seem to be holding up in the ratings game. So who knows what the secret is?
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I’m not so sure about this. Dr. Benton did have some story-lines that did focus on race, even if tangentially. I think his blackness had as much to do with his character as Corday’s gender does.
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Actually, it seems to me that black people in dramas tend to shrug off stereotypes, especially when they are given a lot of play in storylines.
OTH, black characters in comedies have been historically stereotyped. The memory of Amos n Andy is still fresh on many people’s minds.
I think there’s such thing as a “token effect” in comedies. If you are a token black person or white person, then chances are you’re going to be fulfilling some type of stereotype. I love the show Scrubs, even though the black guy on the show fulfills the stereotype of the loud, showboating, jive-talking side-kick. On the show A Different World, Marissa Tormei’s character was clearly fulfilling the stereotype of the clueless, goofy white person. While people might find stereotypes funny, they might also be discomfited by them. So I think producers avoid this problem by making everyone the same and having no “tokens”.
On local and network television news broadcasts, you see white male news anchors, white female news anchors, black male news anchors, black female news anchors, and Asian female news anchors. Aside from … oh, some Korean language TV station in Aurora, Colorado, has anyone ever see an Asian male news anchor, reporter, sports reporter, or meterologist on the air?
ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, FOX, and many of the cable networks have Spanish language audio on the SAP channel. Why doesn’t Univision, Galavision, Telemundo, TV Azteca, or the others have English SAP?
An observation … BET Jazz just calls itself “BET Jazz” – Not “Black Entertainment Television Jazz.” The musicians include black and white, and unlike normal BET, the quality is excellent.
Do African-Americans find it insulting that most television programming that is supposedly aimed at them are relatively lowbrow? Consider the dominance of predominantly bad comedies and standup “Black-people-walk-like-this-white-people-walk-like-that” comedy acts." Are Hispanics insulted because most Spanish language broadcasting consists of soap operas and variety shows like “Sabado de Los Pechos?”
WET, BET, and the Sci Fi channel are all the same thing: a network which attempts to cater to an economically significant portion of a populaiton which isn’t the majority of the population.
What BET represents, I have no idea. I can’t imagine anything that is common to all black people other than the fact that they are black.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by elmwood *
**[Adderall wearing off … must hijack thread …]
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Here in NY, there’s some Asian male live-on-the-scene reporters. Rarely you see them on the set, though.
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“Lowbrow” is a subjective term, certaintly, but many shows targeted to black people are definitely not Emmy-award winning productions. I’m not insulted by this, just annoyed. Obviously SOMEONE likes the programming if they are still on the air. Hopefully, there will be a time when everyone will get annoyed and the market will change.
I think that S. Epatha Merkerson, Jesse L. Martin, Richard Brooks, Ice-T, Don Cheadle, Vivica A. Fox, and James Avery (to name a few) might disagree about their roles being/having been ‘stereotypes’.
To say that black actors do not have any quality roles on TV is a false generalization.
There are likely even more black actors on broadcast networks who are not in stereotyped roles, but as my TV viewing in general is limited severely (mostly I watch the Law & Order shows), it’ll be hard for me to rattle off more names.
According to the U.S. census (on [URL=http://www.prb.org/images/PB54-3fig1.gif]this chart), approximately 72% of the American population is white".
That means approximately 28% of the American population is non-white.
Where’s the non-white 28% portion of Friends?
And as Biggirl noted, given how many television channels we have today, how come there’s only one “minority” channel (nationwide)? We’re short another 20+ “ethnic stations,” by my count…
Regarding the issue of segregated sitcoms, as I recall The Cosby Show was a very popular show, as were, perhaps to a lesser extent, The Jeffersons, Good Times and some others.
If these shows were widely popular, how did they escape the segregation issue? Were they popular with black audiences? Are we getting more segregated in regards to our racial sitcom bias?
Thank you! I knew that would come up at some point.
BET is a little offensive to me, but only because I find the majority of the primetime shows it broadcasts horribly unfunny.
I think there has been tremendous progress concerning the diversification of actors on television- Spanish, Asian, African, etc. People will always find something wrong with stereotyped roles (e.g. an Asian girl on Bernie Mac whose family was full of geniuses and whose parents were overobsessed with academic achievement) as well as those that some deem as “too white” (e.g. the Al Roker-ish black father on Malcolm in the Middle). I think anything, to a point, is better than nothing. I mean, I understand why there would be less minorities on some television shows, population percentage wise, but, to paraphrae Conan O’Brien, in the series finale of Friends it will finally be revealed that there are black people in New York.
Seems unfortunate. One should feel free to celebrate their culture and pride no matter what their color and no matter what percentage of the population they hold. Thank goodness for St. Patricks Day.
I think I’ve heard some very reasonable arguments in defense of BET. It seems fine to me for them to target their product toa specific race. I do think. however, think it is offensive for such a channel to express the sentiment that they speak for that race. It sounds like BET is not nearly as diverse as the group of people it targets.