Come On People by Bill Cosby

Author:Bill Cosby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2009-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

5

THE MEDIA YOU DESERVE

Okay, imagine that the year is 1915 and you are sixteen with the wherewithal to go to the movies on your own. You are fortunate enough to live in New York City where they will actually let you in the movies and even let you sit where you want.

You’ve heard about this great new movie that has come out called Birth of a Nation. Everyone is talking about it. You rush downtown to see it with your buddies. You buy popcorn and some lemonade and wait for the thrills to begin.

But what you see at first makes you real uneasy, and little by little, the film begins to makes your skin crawl. On the screen are all these thuggish black guys trying to rape white women, and here is the Ku Klux Klan riding to the rescue. The Klan? Riding to the rescue? And worse, the rest of the audience is cheering for the Klan. You just slink out of there before the final credits and take that subway back to reality.

Welcome to the world of American media. It would not get much worse, thank God, but it would be about another forty years before it got much better.

In the 1950s, Sidney Poitier broke through race barriers and began to get some serious leading roles in films, the first black actor to do so. In the 1960s, it was one of us, Bill Cosby, who became the first black person to costar in a TV drama, namely I Spy. And it was also the first starring role of any sort in which the black actor did not play a maid or some kind of Amos and Andy-like buffoon. In the 1970s came Roots, the most popular miniseries of all time.

By the 1980s, TV shows like Frank’s Place, The Cosby Show, Roc, and A Different World presented images of African Americans that were authentic and not stereotypical. These shows played an important role in eliminating negative images of black people and instilling a greater pride in black Americans.

In the movies, black actors appeared in a myriad of roles. Top stars emerged. Directors like Spike Lee made powerful films from a black perspective and garnered many awards.

In some cities, black Americans anchored news programs. On national news shows, they held significant reportorial posts. Many good documentaries focused on black history and various aspects of black experiences. A host of good, strong, black role models for children emerged in the media.

And then, just as things were getting better, they began to get worse again. After Hollywood had put most of the silly or ugly stereotypes behind it, it began resurrecting them. Many black sitcoms in the 1990s reverted to buffoonish stereotypes, and black comedians prospered on cable making liberal use of the N-word. In the world of music videos and their movie spin-offs, the imagery grew uglier still.

So now imagine you’re a sixteen-year-old kid in 2007 and you’re watching thuggish black guys on TV lusting after women, when not degrading them as “bitches” or “hos,” and committing random acts of violence.

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