The bi-weekly blog, ALL THAT JAZZ
By JASMINE MAHMOUD
Published online: July 26, 2009

My first thought when Skip Gates got arrested: blame the Emmys and The New York Times.

Last Sunday, I read, “Obama Gives Fiery Address at N.A.A.C.P.,” a New York Times article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg. It began:

President Obama delivered a fiery sermon to black America on Thursday night, warning black parents that they must accept their own responsibilities by … telling black children that growing up poor is no reason to get bad grades.

Gisele Morey

The crux of Stolberg’s article—black parents have no excuse for raising “failing” black children—was not the crux of President Obama’s speech. Rather, in his speech, President Obama traced a fuller picture of what it means to be a black child or black parent in America: the history, the responsibilities and the burdens attached to those subject positions. [You can read the full text of his speech here.]

Stolberg’s news article extracted a minor, singular portion of Obama’s speech and portrayed black America as irresponsible and black children as singularly aspiring to be rappers and athletes. Without reading Obama’s fuller text, I feared that a New York Times reader might think and conclude: “Our black President is telling black people to accept responsibilities, which means that black people are irresponsible.” I expressed my fear to Stolberg, writing to her through the NYT reader comment form:

As a NYT journalist, you carry tremendous weight to deliver the news, to build the historical record, and to influence the minds and actions of readers. Please consider this responsibility, and work towards reporting truthfully, with your future assignments.

She replied to me that her “story was written under crushing deadline pressure.”   (Despite my frustration, I give Stolberg props for replying to me and being accountable.)

At the time of my exchange with Sheryl Stolberg, I was working on a post about the Primetime Emmy Award nominations, announced earlier this month.  I had studied the nominations, but couldn’t muster up a thing to write. Though I like many of the nominated shows (House, No Reservations, LOST), I find the lot of nominated shows–and television overall–underwhelming.  Television doesn’t do what it did for me as a child. It doesn’t render new possibilities, it doesn’t spark meaningful dialogue, it doesn’t move our society to a better place.

So I was working on this blah-piece about the Emmys and then Skip Gates gets arrested.  At news of his arrest, I thought about my familial schooling in black burdens. Being asked “who do I work for” when I visited a friend’s summer home on an exclusive, all-white island off the coast of Connecticut. My mother teaching me that store clerks will suspect me of shoplifting because I am black, so I should avoid doing anything suspicious while in store. My brother being told by police, in our crime-free Irvine, CA hometown, that he can’t wear a bandana because it symbolizes gang violence. My father changing his last name.

There are, of course, more burdens to being black. Alonzo Jackson being forced to remove his Eddie Bauer t-shirt—a shirt he had previously purchased—while in an Eddie Bauer store, because a security officer wrongfully suspected Mr. Jackson of t-shirt theft. Shopping while black, driving while black, dining while black, jogging while black, and ever-relevant, job-hunting while black.  Devah Pager’s finding that black men with clean criminals records have a worse time getting a job than white men who have gone to prison.  Even a white woman with a “black-sounding name” chronicled the name discrimination she faced while job-hunting.  I have learned these burdens.

***

By now, everyone has put in their two cents about the Skip Gates arrest, the aftermath, Obama responses 1&2, and plans for Prof. Gates, Sgt. Crowley and Pres. Obama to get a beer together and possibly lead the nation through racial reconciliation.  President Obama’s second response included his hope that this episode could become a teachable moment for race relations, for “all of us … [to] spend a little more time listening to each other and try to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers and minority communities.”

Perhaps the incident will. But there’s a much more powerful way to improve relations among police officers and minority communities and all citizens: the media. While everyone was pointing fingers at the police or at Professor Gates, I was pointing my finger at the media and at television for failing to present content that advances our society towards better consciousness. Newspapers, magazines, television—these culture producers reach more, do more and say more, than other sources, to affect thoughts on race, gender, sexuality, and class. I wrote to Sheryl Gay Stolberg, in part, because of all the times I hadn’t written to The New York Times or to other media outlets about faulty coverage that continues pernicious racial, sexual and economic bias in our country. That includes exclusive coverage of missing white girls and women—when girls, boys, men and women of all races go missing in this country every day.  That includes coverage of white “finders” versus coverage of black “looters” amidst Katrina.  That includes gender bias in the Olympics coverage.

There’s tremendous bias in television. I stopped watching Late Night With Conan O’Brien, which was nominated this year for an Emmy award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, because I grew sick of repeated and irresponsible gay-bashing jokes. My favorite show, Sex and the City, is guilty of othering non-white characters into caricature-like stereotypes. (See: the pitiful Bangladeshi busboy Samantha sleeps with; the angry black woman and sister of Samantha’s black boyfriend; Miranda’s black boyfriend, whose final scene involves him surrounded by various half-dressed women; and SATC’s general omission of people of color in racially-diverse New York City.)

Christine Huang wrote a great article about modern minstrelsy on television, especially in commercials. My takeaway: television already uses, and abuses race, gender and class to entertain. So why not flip the switch and use television to teach, engage and progress—to have that uncomfortable, needed conversation about bias?  Some programs do. I met my first gay friends through MTV’s Real World; when I finally saw two real same-sex people holding hands or kissing, I accepted their actions as love and nothing else. Similarly, my fondness for HGTV is largely due to the channel’s portrayal of real America, a portrayal largely unseen on scripted television: same-sex couples; interracial couples; Chinese-American, and black, and white and Filipino-American designers; and white and mixed-race and black and South-Asian families seeking housing in diverse neighborhoods.  Like many, I have nostalgia for The Cosby Show.  Bill Cosby said about his show’s inception: “what I did have in mind was that the images that you see on television are not the behaviors of Americans who are black. Racism is so stupid, but it is and it does exist. Period.”

The Cosby Show did something that most television shows are not doing today.  It did something that the arts, at their best, do.  It united, engaged and entertained viewers by advancing what really is and what should be.  An urban black family, engaged with their community.  A working mother who is strong, smart and sexy.  Today, we need that engaging, forward-thinking, conscious-raising, bias-smashing television. We need it to smash the hateful, incendiary rising tide of bigoted imagery traveling through email and social networking sites. We need it to move forward as a nation committed to liberty and justice for all.

So I’m still holding out for the Emmys.  Perhaps when programming celebrates real Americans, renders new possibilities, starts meaningful dialogue and moves our society to a better place, I’ll be able to write something about the nominations.

Note: This opinion article includes an original editorial drawing by artist Gisele Morey.