Black men, often seen as society’s problems, are given a chance to indulge in punditry through a media collaborative now in its second year.
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In many media markets, the complaint by African-American consumers is the same: the news only portrays black men as criminals, their face only appear on screen when connected to a crime.
At many forums and conferences aimed at attracting black attendees, particularly males, the theme of panels are often the same: reframing the narrative of black men in America, harnessing media to counteract negative images.
In my travels, I’ve found that there’s no short of acknowledging the problem.
In 2011, The Opportunity Agenda examined perceptions of and by African-American men and boys and their relationship to the media.
What they found was that the media over-represents black males in depictions of violence, crime and poverty, and the distorted media depictions can lead to negative attitudes towards African-American males.
A few weeks ago, I penned a post entitled “How and Why America Made the Black Man Scary,” and it chronicled, in brief, the transition of the black male body from trivialization to criminalization. Specifically, it showed how narratives and images were used to create a fear factor where there once wasn’t, an ode, if you will, to the power of media.
The reasoning behind authoring the post was to clarify a myth: the black man wasn’t always viewed as something to fear, there was once a widely accepted idea by society that the black man was docile and harmless.
Though the post is new (and is still gaining traction), my activism in media isn’t, it actually dates back to the beginning of 2014.
As a black man first, and a media maker second, it appeared I had an innate capacity to help solve the problem of institutional criminalization of the black male body through communications and broadcasting.
In January of 2014, I published an E-book full of stories by black male mentors, and it was marketed worldwide. I reached out to The Dr. Vibe Show, whom I had a just formed a relationship with, to see if there was any interest in amplifying this project.
Dr. Vibe, who has a large audience of black men and those that love them, supported the project, but he also challenged me to extend the campaign to improve media coverage and public perception of black men and boys.
I accepted the challenge and the campaign was given an official name: Black and Bold Voices™.
The idea was that Techbook Online, a communications powerhouse, and The Dr. Vibe Show, an award-winning international broadcaster, would co-produce quarterly online town halls featuring black men around the world and the issues that unite them.
The first show of 2014, ‘The Power of Perception: Black Men in Media,’ was the last Saturday in September, the 27th, and the most recent show of 2015, ‘The State of Black Media,’ which celebrated the one-year anniversary of the program, was two Saturdays past, on September 26th.
In between those two programs, black men living in Florida, Chicago, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Toronto, and San Diego have been recruited for a BABV show and given a chance to shine in dialogues about media, music, voting, politics and police violence.
Now moving into the second year of programming for Black and Bold Voices™, it’s my hope that society will not only acknowledge the problem with media as it pertains to their portrayal of black men, but the solutions created by black men to mitigate it.
* Tune into 900amWURD or 900amWURD.com every Friday evening at 6:30pm to hear me relive #TheWeekThatWas*
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™