The Antoine Dodson story is probably the most embarrassing incident of a display of recent African American ignorance. The story behind Antoine Dodson is that someone broke into his sister's house attempting to rape her, but the public ignored the fact that Dodson's sister was almost raped, and instead focused on Dodson, who was rather "flamboyantly feminine" and made a mockery of him. Dodson's acclaimed fame came as a result of this, and although he may have enjoyed it, I wonder whether or not Dodson's extensive media coverage was intentional as to make a mockery of him or not? Second, I wonder why Dodson allowed this to happen? And third, I wonder if the rest of African American society feels as embarrassed as I do about Dodson's portrayal in the media?
While Dodson is only one example, there are many others and the question at hand is: Why? Why are there rarely any educated, grammatically-correct African Americans featured in our news story? And why do we allow these stories to cover our people, knowing that we'll be made a mockery of? Unfortunately, this is the embarrassment of being black, so while Dodson was made a mockery of, maybe we really should consider "hiding our kids, hiding our wives, and hiding our husbands too" because the media is making a mockery of our people, and we are standing by, allowing it to happen. When will the embarrassment end?
Kendra Mells
It is indeed true that the media offers everyone five minutes of fame, however it is certainly each person's own choice to stand in front of the news cameras and be apart of interviews that could possibly portray them as ingorant or highly intelligent. No one forces those people to become apart of those interviews and even when they conduct those interviews, they always have the option of changing their voices and other effects. To simply say that the media intentionally chooses ignorant and uneducated Black people to represent the entire Black community is a fallacy we like to call hasty generaliztion.
As a viewer of the news, I will admit that you often times are forced to see the blatantly uneducated, poorly dressed and down right ignorant image of Black people, however it is not the only image that the news broadcasts. Of course the first person that comes to mind when you think about positive Black people on the news would be President Obama and his inauguration; but for more common people, I can remember myself as well as about forty five other students from my high school being on the news because we raised a quarter of a million dollars to travel to Egypt, Africa.
All of this is to say that though you often times find yourself seeing very poor images of Black people in the media; if you very carefully, you will find that there are some positive images of Black people.
Commentary by: Khyajuanna Cooksey
Comment by: Bianca Rogers
ReplyDeleteIt is very hard to disagree with this argument. I agree with the fact that many news stations decide to interview the most ignorant person they can find. I personally think it is about getting ratings and displaying on television what they think the viewers wnat to see. It is hard to display the intelligent African American, because that would be going against what the majority thinks of African Americans as a whole.
This goes along with the fact that many news stations find it necessary to display crimes commited by African Americans more than any other race. I think it has to do with what they think the people want to see.