“BET” stands for Black Entertainment Television. Why is there not White Entertainment Television? Just askin’.”
There already is on sarcastic response to this on his site. I had thought of adding another on my first impulse. Then I stopped to think about the question and a serious answer. It’s the kind of question I have heard before. ‘Why does there need to be a Black XX or YY?’ Why does there need to be Affirmative Action in the 21st Century? And so on.
Let me answer the first thing first. Mr. Keith Burgess-Jackson, the answer is that roughly 93% of all programs on television, movies, other forms of entertainment media stars, features on, and involves Whites. It’s not an attack nor an insult. That is just a fact.
I have discussed this in several posts. In front of the camera and behind it, nearly every person involved in media in America is a non-minority. Look at the people in any episode of Seinfeld. Not the stars, the people in the background. Do the same for Friends, Frasier, Cheers, Home Improvement, and Roseanne. Look at the people in movies like SpiderMan 3, X-Men, License to Wed, Nancy Drew, Blades of Glory, The Godfather, Gone With The Wind, James Bond movies (other than the ones in Jamaica), The Pink Panther, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Silence of the Lambs, A Clockwork Orange, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Reservoir Dogs, The Great Escape, shall I go on?
“As I have stated in previous posts, by my calculations there are about 2% of all characters in a co-lead or support role that are a minority in broadcast television. That is abysmal when the reality walking out the door is that of 27% or 1 in 4.”
So to answer the question, White Entertainment Television is a redundant statement.
Going beyond just the initial question the bigger question of why is a Black television channel, or an Asian television channel, or Hispanic and so on needed? Why is there a need to separate anything?
Because when the mainstream fails to aknowledge the existence of others you seek out something you can relate to. When it doesn’t exist, you create it. I think I made the point of the mainstream media and entetrtainment companies virtual dismissal of non-whites. So when specialty channels appear there shouldn’t be a question, but there is.
Imagine that you were in a country where 1 in 4 people looked like you or close to it. Imagine that the news anchors on tv didn’t look like you, nor anyone on the shows. Read a magazine and you see 3 people like you in the whole thing. Same with billboards. Then you get home and you notice a new channel where everyone looks like you. How do you feel? How much more do you notice how ignored you are by the mainstream media. Minimalized.
You can either accept what the mainstream is stating, ignore it, or go crazy. Or you can watch and support the channels and media that reflects you. Even though the quality may be far less than average, you support it hoping that the money eventually comes to improve the quality of what you have. Except when the money does come, the quality goes even worse. That is BET today in many eyes.
Until there is the ability to be featured, and work, on equal par this cycle basically repeats. It has been for the nearly 4 decades of my life. Is entertainment better today than when I was 10 back in the 70’s? Yes. Is that something to cheer about? NO.
I would guess that Black entertainers have doubled in number, maybe tripled, in the last 30 years. That only gets you to where we are today, and my example above proves that’s pretty sad. Imagine the lives of my parents and others before them. They had to build up to the levels of the 70’s.
So to answer why there needs to be specialized, minority specific entertainment, because the mainstream makes it necessary. And that’s why there doesn’t need to be a White Entertainment Channel.
This is what I think, what do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment