Yes Black Urban Media: The New Blackploitation.

by Staff July 19, 2012 4 Comments Ent. News Opinion Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) Information is freely available everywhere. So much that it is easy to verify and substantiate with a little effort. However, for most African Americans, the major news topics of the day are ignored by their most treasured sources of information – black owned urban media and radio.

Now if you want to find out about the release of an album, which is sleeping with who, the latest baby momma or what celebrities were fighting at the club, black urban media is your place. Most it seems have adopted the playbook of the National Enquirer. Now they will cover every itty bitty nuanced piece of information on Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, Real Housewives and Basketball wives, as well as stories on young black men being shot by white men, but only after it becomes the focus of the world. And let us not forget President Obama, it seems as if the only politics covered dally with the commander in Chief 95 percent of the time. But rarely anything else. You won’t find anything on the Eurozone Crisis, or the LIBOR scandal, or serious presentations of what is occurring in Libya, Syria, Somalia, or even the continuing crisis in Haiti or the senseless shootings in Chicago.

If such topics are presented, they are aggregated and tend to not have any prospective insight regarding the direct impact they have of African Americans, and worse, if they involve being critical of the Obama Administration, they are not presented at all.

Now maybe Blackploitation is not the correct term, afterall they made certin not to shot at anyone other than “the man”, “charlie,” or uncle tomes helping the man. Not to mention their message was always one of the come-up and collective empowerment. Maybe I am making a big issue out of nothing, maybe I’m not. What I can say is that we in this medium are intentionally dumbing down our community by offering garbage over the proper material for health intellectual development.

I take this from the message I learned reading “the Miseducation of the Negro” some 30 years ago written by Carter G. Woodson. In the book he wrote: My query is, are we in urban black media building the back door without asking? I have often asked when did getting paid become for important than education in our community. If the answer the the previous is yes, than I have my answer.

Staff Writer; Torrance Stephens

For more articles by this talented brother do visit; Raw Dawg Buffalo.

4 Comments

duke says:

July 22, 2012 at 9:53 pm

nothing wrong with constructive critique, it’s just unfortunate that has become like some one is a vampire in this day in age because of the steady diet of the last 20years of wack boogie passing itself off as black entertainment/black culture, more should be critical of it, there is mental illness in america’s black communities to where critical thinking is now demonized it has taken on a attitude of remain silent and not make waves because you will be precieved as hatin on someone, it’s become conditioned into wanting to be marginalized under a false sence of “we’ll at least it’s alil sumptin sumptin. Because alil sumptin sumptin is better than nuthin nuthin.”

Black media in america has been under attack since the mid90’s if u were lost in the boogie or just awakened from the boogie then it may be of a suprise to you, but the real suprise is where were the owners of these companies? not the ones who did cash out, but the ones who remained and tried to play in the system but got played, where are those owners now? And for the record kblx former parent inner city broadcasting corp. was forced into bankruptcy they weren’t sold like has been foolishly reported for close to a year now, bu some media sites on the web. Their creditors broke them and forced them into brankruptcy real clear events like that should be reported and not just pushed to the side because reporting those real stories will awaken some black folk to what they really are up against in america 2012.

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Terrance Amen says:

July 22, 2012 at 4:17 am

He who controls the media, controls your mind. No wonder why we act the way we do. Someone once said, I don’t like the way our people are portrayed in movies. The other person said, well if you don’t like the way you’re portrayed, make your own movies. The writing is on the wall, but we can’t see it because we don’t have enough outlets to get the word out, or refuse to see it because of 400 hundred years of negative programming. Black Unity is the key and always will be.

POWER

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harryo says:

July 20, 2012 at 9:58 am

What Black owned radio? I live in California which only has two Black owned stations in the entire state. With the sale of WBLX/WLIB in New York, there are no Black stations in the nation’s largest city. Of the 13,000 radio stations in the US, less than 200 are Black owned and many of those stations are in smaller markets

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John says:

July 19, 2012 at 7:28 pm

Instead of criticising other Black media, why don’t you post articles on other topics on this website?

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