Tuesday, March 19, 2024

7 Ways VH1 Is Destroying The Black Community.

April 22, 2014 by  
Filed under Ent., News, Opinion, Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) Due to their interesting choices in programming, VH1 might be better referred to as “The Evil Empire.”  Their endless stream of reality TV shows tend to focus on taking otherwise irrelevant black people and making them as  recognizable as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (I’m serious:  There are black kids who could identify a Basketball Wife before they could identify Dr. King – don’t even try Malcolm X or Harriet Tubman).   There is then this awkward rat race, where famous people with no talent end up doing outrageous and embarrassing things so they can remain in the public eye.

 

It’s sad.  It’s annoying. It’s degrading.  Sometimes, it’s just downright embarrassing.  Not that we should spend all of our time being worried about what white people think about us, but our people are far more dignified and diverse than the coonery that reality TV executives love to market and elevate.  Bill Cosby’s shows used to make black kids want to attend HBCUs, but VH1?s shows are putting our kids into rehab and STD clinics.  This is not a good tradeoff for our people.

So, here are a few ways that VH1 just might a psychological version of the Tuskegee Experiment:

1) Promoting sloppy and tragic decision-making:  A teacher recently told me about a little girl in her first grade class who was asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  She said, “I want to be a basketball wife” (as if this were a real profession).  Stories like this remind us that our kids are always watching and that the entertainment they absorb is (as Dr. Christopher Emdin at Columbia University so eloquently explains) a form of education.  Not only are they learning about possible career choices, they are also learning about life choices:  Sleeping with the wrong person, having a baby at the wrong time, spending their money in the wrong way and valuing the wrong things.  Then, when that little girl is 31 years old with no education and four baby’s daddies, and also can’t celebreality-2014figure out why she’s so depressed that she’s unable to get out of bed in the morning, we wonder how she ended up in such a hopeless predicament.

2) You’re now helping people to sell sexx tapes?  It’s one thing that the 44-year old single mother Mimi Faust is celebrating her inner freak by promoting a dirty tape, that’s her right.  But it’s another thing that VH1 is helping to promote the tape in order to improve ratings for her show.  Maybe this is where the FCC should step in and say, “Hmmm, maybe we shouldn’t have a show on the public airwaves that mass promotes the idea of making a dirty tape in order to pay the bills.”  Maybe someone needs to stand in front of their building with picket signs.  Maybe a group of psychologists should come forward and share the findings of research showing that marketing messages actually do impact the thinking of young children.   Should we do something about this, or should we just act like none of this makes a difference in our society?

I won’t even talk about Mimi’s poor daughter, whose friends at school are going to be able to look her naked mother up on the Internet.  I hope Mimi’s daughter knows how to defend herself from bullies, since the rumors in middle school are going to be so vicious that she’ll need both Dr. Phill AND Iyanla Vanzant to get over the trauma.  I should probably call my mother up and thank her for not becoming a 44-year old p?rn star.

3) Making unhealthy, self-destructive people into role models in the African American community:  Seriously, can you please explain what talent most of the members of Basketball Wives possess other than being able to get a rich athlete to sleep with them?  Wait…maybe that is a special talent….the kind that men pay for on street corners late at night.  From what I understand, most of the “Basketball Wives” were never wives at all.  Shouldn’t they just be called “Basketball Baby’s mamas” instead?  Most reality TV stars aren’t famous for having a talent…instead, they’re just famous for being famous.  

Also, we can’t be upset with people who are simply responding to whatever mental illness they developed from the trauma they endured as children.  Stevie J, the man who’s piled up so many baby’s mamas that he’s now a million dollars behind in child support (I’m not joking), says that he is a womanizer because his mother abandoned him.  I feel bad for him, I really do.  But when we celebrate the self-destructive manifestation of a person’s untreated mental illness, we turn it from something that must be confronted to a thing that is now being celebrated.

4) Do black people REALLY need more violence right now?  Most of the Reality TV shows feature some kind of drama and the celebration of violence as a way to promote themselves to the public.  Porsha Stewart hitting Kendra Moore upside the head had people talking.  Evelyn Lozada got famous for climbing up on tables and chasing people around the room like a horny zoo animal.  Rappers get famous by talking about how they got shot.  Effectively, we’ve turned the most tragic parts of the black experience into a comfortable and profitable norm, and big, white corporations are able to profit from it.  If I were a white man running one of these companies, I’d probably spend my time thinking, “What in the hell is wrong with these people?  Don’t they realize that we’re making fun of them?”

5) We’re becoming a pack of brain dead vegetables obsessing over things that really don’t matter:  My friend (just last night) told me that her friends make fun of her for not watching “Basketball Wives” and the “Real Housewives of Atlanta.”  I told her that it’s OK that she has better things to do, like working toward her goals, taking care of her kids, going to the gym or planning a mission to Mars.  The point is that, maybe we have to ask:  Is it a GOOD thing that black people watch more television than everyone else?  Maybe it’s not so healthy to sit in one spot and stare at a screen like a mentally-disabled puppy for 8 or 9 hours a day.  That might not be good for the spirit.  A consumer/viewer is a bystander in life:  Rather than making things happen, they are WATCHING things happen.  For the consumer/viewer, your life isn’t what you make it out to be….it’s what some television producer has decided that it’s going to be.  You are effectively living in the matrix.

6) Yes, let’s start marketing more broken families and pretending that this insanity is normal:  A dude with nine babies with seven women?  Yea, he’s a playa.  The mother who can barely take care of the kids she keeps making with men who don’t know how to wear a condom?  God tells us not to judge, so you should just mind your own business, even if she’s eventually begging you for money to take care of the kids she could never afford to have in the first place.

Anybody who doesn’t understand the devastating impact of broken families in the African American community is out of their mind.  White America did this to us with the War on Drugs, which is why Michelle Alexander and I both agree that reparations should be paid for the mass incarceration holocaust.  But to have the same network that owns VH1 and BET (Viacom) celebrate the genocide of our families is entirely unacceptable.

7) The selling of dysfunctional relationships:  I often wonder how many little girls are seeing the women on Love & Hip-Hop make some of the most horrific relationship decisions and thinking, “I wanna also be with a promiscuous rapper with 40 tattoos and six babies mamas, who smokes a pound of weed every day when I grow up.”  The hypermasculinity of corporatized hip-hop has taught young black men that being dismissive and disrespectful toward women is the way to express your manhood.  We know that the opposite is actually true:  Self-discipline, education, and honorably protecting those you love is what makes you a man.  This deforming of the black male psyche is making us the weakest in our communities when we should be the strongest.  High-testosterone women who grow up expecting to be both the mother and the father of their kids don’t help the problem either.   We MUST learn how to have healthy relatioships if we are going to survive as a people:  Yes, fathers do matter in the life of a child.

I wonder if there is ever going to be an episode where someone is killed from domestic violence or it gets out that one of the cast members has caught HIV…..I’m sure VH1 will be ecstatic about those ratings.  Whether it’s physically, spiritually, or emotionally, they seem to love watching black people die.  What’s even sadder is that we’re happy to let them do it, because they’ve always known that our dignity is for sale.

Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins 

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition.  For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.

 


Comments

9 Responses to “7 Ways VH1 Is Destroying The Black Community.”
  1. Solange says:

    When you have the daughter of a civil rights leaded not knowing what the Underground Railroad is and then goes on camera to attack another black woman, you get a snapshot of just how bad parenting has become. This individual is then glamorized and has “fans” perpetuating the ignorance and mediocracy
    Then you have the Lozada’s, talentless women overdosed on implants and surgery, violently attacking other women, prostituting herself for shoes and bags as if they are the most important thing n the world. She then rushes to post these prizes on her social media. Then there is all of these so called mothers, the filth that comes out of their mouth and is forever documented on TV and Internet, for their kids to discover and read. It’s a nightmare snapshot or irresponsibility , ignorance and less than zero self esteem and value system.

  2. Joyclyn says:

    The black community is destroying the black community. End of story.

  3. Kim says:

    Fault lays on many, the neteorks, the people who produce and promote such mess, the actors that go along with it, and those who take valuable time time to watch it. Its ashame with what little postive images we do get we help degrade ourselves. Yes, other races also do some of this too but not as much as our people. We seem to have really no base on values and basic morals at times as many other races does. Slavery took so much from us but with all our ancestors fought so hard to achieve this is what we do now when we have so much more power now…just sad. Yeah, it can be entertaining but at what cost. Why are children following alone, its because mothers are not doing their job or fathers if its them. I don’t think we ever will overcome and unify as a people or overcome our unambitious spirit to desire more as a whole for to many of us desire less. To many lack no better and refuse to see what the deeper meaning is behind this foolery. You cannot ever though believe a white network will care about the black community, just isn’t going to happen. We need self-love and self- worth as a whole to become better and stronger.

  4. terry says:

    You cant blame a tv show for all of the problems in the black community. It begins with the parents. I watch some of these shows because they are a
    little over the top, not because im looking to be inspired. We cant blame others for our problems, we have to become the solution and take responsibility.

  5. Truthbeliever says:

    Quite franky, I believe Boyce Watkins is destroying the Black Community.

  6. annebeth66 says:

    VH1nor Bravo can be blamed for the problems that plague the Black Community; that responsibility lies with those Blacks that are making poor choices, for themselves and their families. If people did not watch theses shows and find them entertaining, the stations would change their format to something that could deliver huge ratings. All of the “Blacks Acting a Fool” shows are doing well, getting larger ratings, bringing in more Ad dollars, so I am sure that more shows are being produced. I remember when “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World” were the shows that Blacks wanted to watch because they showed us in a positive light and were something inspiring. Now Basketball Wives, Love & Hip Hop, Real Housewives of Atlanta and Black Ink Crew are the Black shows getting the ratings and our young people find these shows inspiring, which is sad.

  7. Forwardthinker says:

    I think VH1 needs regulating. I know there is freedom of speech, but, the shows that Bravo & VH1 are churning out ar creating serious damage. Parents no longer take responsibility for their kids, they blame everyone else for problems with them. They allow them to behave in an appalling manner and many young folks nowadays ar functionally illiterate. They aren’t going to be the ones getting good jobs and blazing paths to success. Add these degrading tv shows that glorify women beating up each other, selling themselves for Louis and loubatins and generally having less than zero values or self respect, and you ar getting a snapshot of tomorrow’s mothers. I say that these shows need to be boycotted, I say that education comes first, I say respect your body and don’t treat it like a human garbage bin, loose the grunting and cuss words, hold your head high and make something of yourselves.

  8. Seraphina says:

    Thank you, thank you, thank you! It hurts me to see the way we are slipping down into mediocracy, that being dumb is cool, that foul language and promiscuity is the norm. The worship and selling of our bodies for shoes and handbags, the lack of education or self esteem. Stop the madness.

    People like Evelyn Lozada belong in a jail or mental hospital. How has no one pressed charges against her for the repeated abuse of women. Be smart, get an education, respect your bodies, don’t cuss and sleep around. Reality shows are not life, pekoe watch them not because they respect the people in them, but because we ar fascinated by the lengths that the cast will go to humiliate and degrade themselves for money. It is exactly like prostitution. Stop watching, boycott that brain washing rubbish, demand somth better as role models. It is creating a generation of imbeciles.

  9. toomanygrandkids says:

    “White America did this to us with the War On Drugs.” So untrue. Blacks did this to each other. The ones responsible for the destruction in black communities are the drug dealers, drug addicts, other black criminals, and the so-called black leaders who didn’t/don’t address these issues. But wait, some of these blacks are the author’s friends or associates.

    VH1 kinda reminds me of drug dealers, McDonald’s, and the military: They employ a great amount of black people who are willing to do anything to get paid. These black men and women aren’t acting. This is how they live their lives before they got in front of the camera. I doubt if they care how their children feel or what their children go through.

    Those little girls watching these shows and grow up to make bad decisions can’t blame the men or women on the shows or VH1. The blame lies on the black mothers and black fathers who allow their daughters to watch these shows.

    And please, don’t blame white America.

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