By condemning special interest television networks for exacerbating a racial divide, Ms. Dash revealed she’s clueless about culture promotion and preservation.
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It appears Ms. Stacey Dash, an actress most known for her association with the ‘Clueless’ media franchise, doesn’t understand American history, let alone that which pertains to African-Americans, or any other race or culture for that matter. Ms. Dash, a Fox News contributor, today appeared on the network and denounced the movement to condemn the Oscars for their lack of diversity as “ludicrous,” while attempting to make the point that television networks like BET (Black Entertainment Television) further exacerbates the country’s racial divide by only recognizing on their awards shows African-Americans, a false assertion that Mr. Donald Trump, the front-runner among Republican Presidential candidates, agreed with.
“We have to make up our minds. Either we want segregation or integration. If we don’t want segregation then we need to get rid of channels like BET,” Ms. Dash, who once appeared on an episode of ‘The Game,’ a show that airs on the aforementioned network, said.
The glamorous star of film and television, whose controversial comments resulted in her trending on Twitter and prompted BET to issue a response, also spoke out against Black History Month, suggesting it’s unnecessary since there’s no White History Month to speak of. Regarding special interest channels like BET, what Ms. Dash fails to understand – or blatantly disregards – is they exist not to segregate races, but rather to commemorate and celebrate culture.
In other words, though integration is the law of the land, institutions and traditions that promote and preserve a specific culture still needs to be erected and maintained, thus the reason for a Jewish History Museum, the annual acknowledgement of St. Patrick’s Day and the establishing of Univision, an American Spanish-language broadcast television network that recently purchased a stake in The Onion, a satirical website, and which is rumored to be going public.
And as it relates to honoring the history of a particular race, the catalyst for such an action stems for the dominate race diluting, excluding, and, in many cases, erasing it from the archives. Black History Month, for example, is the only time most school-aged individuals—and in some instances adults—have a chance to interact with narratives and images of black achievement, as their daily lives are more often than not bombarded by a not-so-subtle reminder that American history is largely a white man’s sport.
Americans can be united while still creating assets that divide audiences with the goal of appealing to their interest(s). Ms. Dash is proposing creating a reality that’s quasi-monolithic, and that’s simply not how humans operate.
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