Gates Shows How Much More There Is to Say About Race
Administration Plans 100 Events in Black Communities
Once shunned, Al Jazeera has fans in Obama White House
“There Are Legions of Men Like Me Who Love Their Families”
Columnist Tells Readers Real Men Cry, Even Reporters
Public Broadcasting Survives First Wave in Budget War
Gates Shows How Much More There Is to Say About Race
That event is Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s four-hour “Black in Latin America” series, debuting on PBS Tuesday night.
Even Barack Obama figures in the series. He shows us that south of the border, there were “Barack Obamas” — black leaders of multiracial countries — long before 2008. “Imagine if George Washington and John Adams had been African American,” he says at one point.
The series confirms that those who are accused of “obsessing” about race were right all along: There is much to obsess about and too much that has been left unsaid or been suppressed; too much history that still affects us in ways we have hardly thought about.
And “Black in Latin America” makes clear that this is not just a United States issue.
Gates addresses why he initiated this series in a q-and-a on the PBS website.
“I conceived of this as a trilogy of documentary series that would mimic the patterns of the triangle trade. There would be a series on Africa which was called Wonders of the African World in 1999. And then there would be a series on black America called America Behind the Color Line in 2004. And then the third part of the triangle trade was, of course, South America and the Caribbean. The triangle trade was Africa, South America, and the continental United States and Europe. That’s how I conceived of it. I’ve been thinking about it since before 1999. But the first two were easier to get funding for. Everyone knows about black people from Africa, everyone knows about the black American community. But surprisingly, and this is why the series is so important, not many people realize how ‘black’ South America is. So of all the things I’ve done it was the most difficult to get funded and it is one of the most rewarding because it is so counter-intuitive, it’s so full of surprises.”
He also mentions how media coverage affected his course of action:
“Haiti just had the earthquake, it was very much in the news. Every night for months I would watch Anderson Cooper talking about the earthquake. But never did Anderson Cooper or anyone else talk about the history of Haiti. They’d talk about voodoo as if it was lunatic superstitions rather than one of the world’s old religions. Most journalists didn’t write anything sophisticated about the history of the revolution. And no one talked about the fact that it was at the western end of an island with another country, the Dominican Republic, and that the two of them had created their identities together and in opposition to each other. So it’s like Jacob and Esau, Yin and Yang. They’re both there on that island, separated by a river, and they’re very different countries. One is Spanish, Catholic and white, as it’s fond of saying. The other is African, black and voodoon. So we’re going to lead off the airing of the series with the Haiti & Dominican Republic program.
Later, he says:
“Each country except for Haiti went through a period of whitening, when they wanted to obliterate or bury or blend in their black roots. Each then, had a period when they celebrated their cultural heritage but as part of a multi-cultural mix and in that multi-cultural mix, somehow the blackness got diluted, blended. So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be ‘blackish’” — really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features. In other words, the poverty in each of these countries has been socially constructed as black. The upper class in Brazil is virtually all white, a tiny group of black people in the upper-middle class. And that’s true in Peru, that’s true in the Dominican Republic. Haiti’s obviously an exception because it’s a country of mulatto and black people but there’s been a long tension between mulatto and black people in Haiti. So even Haiti has its racial problems.”
One detractor argued on the PBS website that indigenous people got short shrift in the tale of the African slaves, their descendants and their colonizers. They are correct. It demonstrates how much more there is to talk about.
- Sam Allis, Boston Globe: Gates looks at black experience throughout Latin America
- Jared Mccallister, New York Daily News: PBS turns focus of the lens on centuries-old culture clash
- News release: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Uncovers Latin America’s African Roots in New Four-Part Series, Black in Latin America, Premiering Tuesday, April 19 at 8 p.m. on PBS
First lady Michelle Obama, center right; Dr. Jill Biden, wife of the vice president; President Obama.
Administration Plans 100 Events in Black Communities
“It may be a stretch to say that President Barack Obama has crafted a ‘black agenda’ for America, but this much is clear: One week after announcing his re-election campaign for 2012, Obama has dispatched senior black White House advisors to black communities across the country to share stories about how the administration is working to improve the quality of life for African-Americans,” Michael Cottman wrote Friday for BlackAmericaWeb.com.
“The Obama administration’s goal is ambitious: To connect with one million African-Americans and host 100 events in black communities across the country throughout 2011. Obama, America’s first black president, is sending out a resounding battle cry to his African-American base at a time when his approval ratings among blacks is slipping.
“This charge-the-hill approach to African-American outreach is unprecedented for the Obama administration, and it signals that Obama is leaving nothing to chance and has listened — and responded — to critics who claim that Obama needs a black agenda moving forward.”
Since these appearances are not campaign events, they are not likely to affect media coffers, except as they relate to coverage.
- Charles M. Blow, New York Times: The Pirates of Capitol Hill
- Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: Surprise, surprise: rich get richer
- Colbert I. King, Washington Post: Could D.C. officials have prevented the budget deal’s local bullying?
- Dwight Lewis, Nashville Tennessean: Bills amount to ‘subtle intimidation’
- Askia Muhammad, Washington Informer: The GOP Sham-A-Lamma-Ding-Dong-Budget
- Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post Writers Group: AWOL on Immigration
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Obama’s re-election budget
- Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Here’s the winners of the lying contest
- Eugene Robinson, Washington Post; http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in_budget_wars_the_gop_demands_the_impossible/2011/04/11/AF31kPMD_story.html?nav=email page
- Paul Schwartzman and Nikita Stewart, Washington Post: D.C. voting rights proponents’ faith in Obama sinks
- Gregory Stanford blog: A tightly guarded secret: Dems do better on economy
- David Squires, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.: Urban League’s bone to Obama
- Marisa Trevino, Latina Lista blog: Advocates for undocumented immigrants rate White House poor on fulfilling 2008 campaign promises
- Marisa Trevino, Latina Lista blog: Guest Voz: Wherever federal budgets cuts are made, Latinos bound to feel cuts the deepest
- Joe Williams, Politico: D.C. angry at budget deal, Obama
Once shunned, Al Jazeera has fans in Obama White House
“In the halls of American power, the Arab Spring has brought Al-Jazeera in from the cold,” Keach Hagey and Byron Tau wrote Sunday for Politico.
“Seven years after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the broadcaster’s reporting ‘vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable’ and President George W. Bush joked about bombing it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised it as ‘real news’ in her recent Senate testimony.
” ‘Not only that, her staffers, as well as those of the CIA and the Obama White House, were attending the Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner as Al-Jazeera’s guests.
” ‘They are a really important media entity, and we have a really great relationship with them,’ said Dana Shell Smith, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international media engagement, who speaks Arabic and has frequently appeared on the channel. ‘This administration has empowered those of us who actually do the communicating to be in a close relationship with Al-Jazeera. They understand that the relationship can’t consist of complaining to each other about the differences we have.’
“The differences also have shrunk as the big story in the Middle East has shifted from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the democratic movements sweeping the region. In the recent uprisings, U.S. interests tended to line up with Al-Jazeera’s, and President Barack Obama alluded to both the network’s influence and its pro-democracy bent in remarks caught on an open mic during a closed-door fundraiser last week.
” ‘The emir of Qatar come by the Oval Office today, and he owns Al-Jazeera basically,’ Obama said in remarks recorded by CBS News’s Mark Knoller. ‘Pretty influential guy. He is a big booster, big promoter of democracy all throughout the Middle East. Reform, reform, reform. You’re seeing it on Al-Jazeera.’ “
“There Are Legions of Men Like Me Who Love Their Families”
“WHEN I began writing for the Daily News, my goal was to break down barriers rather than build them up, to find common ground rather than exploit differences, to present a portrait of my community that was honest and whole,” he wrote.
“I’m proud that I was able to do that. Readers of every stripe grabbed hold of my stories about parenthood; stories that reached a place inside them where love is boundless, and family matters, and hope is alive.
“There were those who believed such stories had no place in media where venom is valued over veracity. Sadly, they missed the point.
“The point of my stories about getting my daughter ready for school or helping my son with his homework or taking a road trip with my family was simply this: There are legions of men like me who love their families and want the best for them. Men who work hard, just like you do. Just like all of us should — no matter where we live, no matter how much money we make, and no matter what we look like.
“In telling those stories, I said things that statistics never could. I opened minds that had been closed and sparked conversations that needed to take place. I made a difference, not only in these pages or on the Internet, but in our community. Through literacy programs like Words on the Street, I was able to take the Daily News to places where it impacted young people. I’m proud to have done that, because the legacy of those connections will live on.”
Neither Jones nor Larry Platt, the former Philadelphia magazine editor who was named editor of the Daily News in January, could be reached for comment.
Columnist Tells Readers Real Men Cry, Even Reporters
John W. Fountain a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, confessed to readers that “Over the years, as a reporter, I have cried after witnessing human loss and suffering. I’ve shed tears more times than I can count as I have experienced the triumphs and also sufferings that accompany this thing called life.”
He continued, “And I have come to believe that my ability to cry, in some ways, has been my salvation, that thing that has kept me connected, not to my ‘feminine side’ — whatever that means — but to the emotional barometer that exists in us as human beings, even men.”
Fountain is promoting a new anthology, “Dear Dad: Reflections on Fatherhood.”
Public Broadcasting Survives First Wave in Budget War
“National Public Radio dodged the first wave of attacks last week, but the ‘all clear’ whistle can’t sound just yet,” David Hinckley wrote Monday in the New York Daily News.
“The compromise temporary budget approved by Congress last week gives the Corporation for Public Broadcasting about the same funding it got last year: $445 million.
“That’s $445 million more than some of the hard-line public radio and public television critics wanted.
“Equally important, the allocation doesn’t restrict the way public radio stations can spend the money.
“Some critics wanted to stipulate that individual public radio stations couldn’t spend their government money to buy programs from NPR.
“That would have cut off NPR’s single largest source of revenue.”
Still, as Karen Everhart and Mike Janssen noted last month in Current magazine, “NPR is facing the most serious political crisis in its history with no chief executive to speak for it, no chief fundraiser to make sure its new building can be finished, and no chief journalist to rebuff or heed criticism of its newsroom.”
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