Contributing to the Black Dialogue

"Write the vision and make it plain...."

Some time ago, Dr. Makasa Kasonde, a professor at Emory University, wrote in an article for TBWT.com saying in part, “…The African professor has a moral obligation to dramatize the plight of African people and to drum up support for development in Africa.” Indeed, this is true for the African and the African American intelligentsia concerned about things African and African American. 

In America and throughout the world, since American media reaches throughout the globe, there is a dialogue that is ongoing about the plight and state of being Africans and African Americans. That dialogue is often structured by those who do not have the best interest of Africans and African Americans at heart, and that dialogue is usually propagated primarily by mass media, which disclaims any untoward proclivity in fashioning truth. However, any examination of the notions Asians and other newcomers to the shores have about Blacks demonstrates clearly that mass media have a very definite bent in their propagation of information about Black Americans. 

As an English professor, I have been very fortunate to have new immigrants in my classes. One semester, a class of mine was reading Dutchman and watching the movie. One student, newly to these shores, wrote a paper in which he only saw a White woman, Lula, and a Black man, Clay, engaged in sexual intrigue with each other. He commented that  Lula was a beautiful White woman, and we all know that Black men want White women. 

His comment, although very crude, did not surprise me—I have heard worse. But it stems, I think, from the common diet fed by American media to Asia and other parts of the globe where the American media is watched many hours a day. Every stereotype about Blacks that is imaginable is seen in American movies, sitcoms, game shows, and American media generally. And anyone who thinks this type of crass sponsorship is not affecting minds, he or she should rethink their ideas on this matter. 

There is a new generation of Americans coming to our shores in large numbers; they have no history of America and its social structure and struggles; they know nothing about Black Americans, other than the TV images they have been fed; they view America as a land of promise, in which one need only subscribe to the White American mode of thinking and acting, and they will become Americans and get rich. Of course, the mode of thinking that they see is driven by the American media—a White monolith that does not show that White diversity of thought exists or that there is Black life beyond our 27% underclass. 

Even many Americans born and bred here have trouble distinguishing reality from America’s media images. The images the media sells are so convincing to many that the most repugnant person or behavior can become popular. This powerful American media almost has the ability to transform those who are average and unappealing to the eyes into sex symbols and hotshots. 

I was reading a magazine a few days ago, and a question person asked several persons, “What question would you ask to anyone you wanted, if you had a chance?” One response was this: “I would ask Russell Crowe, the actor, what he thinks about.” She thought he was so cute and fascinating. The other answers to this question were similarly inane. But this is the drivel an American media breeds. 

This powerful media creates heroes out of non-heroic figures; stereotypes out of minute nuggets of truth (the 27% underclass becomes all Black people) and build upon its own fictions so that lies and stereotypes are embedded in the propaganda and used as truth; it transforms the most homely into the desirable and wanted; it creates a White sex goddess and fashions the tale being told so that all Black men want White women and all the naïve believe that this tale is true. And so strong is this fiction that it was as if my poor student had not read Dutchman at all. Certainly, if he had read it, it had less  influence on him than the deceptions of the White media. 

One cannot read Dutchman and conclude that Black men want White women--that idea is just distant from this play. But this student was very distant from any ideas of this play. But he represented the new class of immigrant Americans we must deal with and educate about matters Black and about matters truly American. 

This is why it is important to contribute to the ongoing dialogue. Without positive Black voices, those Whites who do not care about our well-being will go unopposed, and the images new immigrants arrive with will be the images that they structure their thoughts about Black Americans with. 

Furthermore, there is a new generation of young Blacks who have no sense of their own history and how they achieved the level of social, educational, economic, psychological freedom they have. And without a sense of one’s history, one stands in a precarious position of allowing a recurrence of that history. 

I am often recruiting writers for our magazine. So, from time to time, I ask a number of Black professionals to write articles, and I get many sincere promises. But when I receive no manuscripts and ask why, the answer is usually the same: “I just don’t have time to write.”   

This is the position that many Black scholars, thinkers, community workers, and professionals are crippled by. College presidents, business leaders, ministers, and Black professionals in all fields are so thoroughly captured in the doing that they have no time for reflecting and setting forth their valuable ideas into writing. Consequently, those image-makers who have untoward ideas about Blacks carry on the ongoing dialogue. Occasionally, they will hire a Black face to say very adverse things about Black people. In so doing they try to create Black leaders who say very White things as a diet for our consumption.  That works only on a limited number, but that is too many. 

We have thoughts and ideas about the situation of Black America, and there is a dialogue that is ongoing that requires Black intelligentsia to engage in it. The role and obligation of the Black scholar and intellectual is to clarify our position in the world, among all the positions that are touted as ours; it is to rationalize a Black agenda and culture; it is to mobilize Black thought and Black action for the well being of the African American and African communities--we are connected, and that should never go unrecognized. 

There is still a Black struggle that is ongoing in America. Our struggle has changed, and the weapons of our struggle are now ideas rationally argued, forcefully put forth, jealously advocated; the weapons are also financial resources designated to Black causes and Black philanthropic structures in our community; the weapons are political and legal; the weapons are our adherence to historical obligations and commitments made on us by those who did not personally know us but were willing to put down their lives for us, as they saw our future in their hands. 

So there are witnesses gone on before us. It was because of us that they willingly sacrificed their well being, their lives, their freedom--such as it was--that we would be able to push back an ignorance that grips this nation about Black people, about race, about ethics and morality, and about the right standing of all human beings in the sight of God. 

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