I watched the Black Men Revealed show on TV One last night and it gave me that old creepy feeling, but not exactly.
Long ago when I used to watch Tony Brown's Journal on Sunday mornings it would wake me right up. In no time the show would be into a topic and I'd be screaming back at the television. Then I would have to shutup to hear the next thing that was said. It was frustrating. I hated the fact that there was never enough time to cover the topics I really wanted to discuss. Not so today; I have Tivo. So the Spousal Unit and I got into it. It took us two and a half hours to get through a one hour show. We ended up on a tangent, a very deep tangent that had a moderately satisfactory resolution. So on the one hand I had the satisfaction of being shook awake and passionately into topics on the tube, but I didn't have the empty feeling of having the discussion snatched away too soon due to the limits of television and the sponsorship of Pepsi.
The biggest difference between then and last night's broadcast was that I know two of the participants. I'm acquainted with Leo Terrell. We used to see each other semi-regularly at Ofari's over in Liemert Park. It has been a while, actually. Hmmm. And of course my Brotherhood brother Joseph C. Phillips was sitting to Terrell's left, which can only happen physically. Leo was on fire, but you could tell he enjoyed himself. Joseph had the unique ability to quiet the room when he spoke. Everybody held up their end very well and it was very enjoyable to get that motion.
This happened to be the first broadcast I've seen in the series, and I have to say that the package works. The editing was very well done and the pace was swift with a lot of detail. The Unit and I agree that it's a very compelling show that needs to focus on one topic and let the brothers go. Get rid of the dominoes and keep it rolling. It's something that you could do only without commercials, which means it would make for a very nice DVD. But I sincerely hope the series gets extended. The formula works. Now that the producers have been through a season, they'll be able to refine it into perfection. The best thing about the show is that you never got the feeling that there wasn't some aspect an intelligent black position that was left hanging. There were lots of spaces to throw in your two cents, but in the end you couldn't say that one of these brothers just didn't belong. In short, it was a bomb show.
That was the one that I was originally slotted to shoot, but there were some changes and I went to another one. February 4th, mark your calendars. As for now, I'm not surprised at how well it came off, but just very pleased to see it done.
There's basically one thing that I think should have been said in last night's discussion that didn't get said. When it came to Leo's continuing reference to 'selective enforcement', I think he complained a little bit too loudly. Like the brother on the left hand side of the screen, I didn't buy Leo's numbers, and furthermore I would have brought up the fact that when it comes to the net of the numbers of black men in 'the System', it's a small fraction of the overall black male population. My position is that selective enforcement is our burden, and of all the burdens black men have faced in America, this is the slightest. My father dealt with selective enforcement and Jim Crow and his grandfather dealt with those two and the miseries of sharecropping. If we're going to talk about problems, then we need to own the solutions and cultivate the strength, none of it is beyond our grasp. So man up and deal. That's this black man's perspective.
I learned a little more about Leo. I like him, he's an admirable man, a made man of his times. And he conserves and advocate's spirit. But I think he's been around too many criminals. I know taking him out to dinner wouldn't change the way he sees the world, but it would give him some time with good people, like those on the set of this program.
As for the other myths, I know I wrote something down here somewhere. I just can't find it. They must have fallen into the cracks on that busted disk drive of mine. Oh well, you know the answers. Discussing it is all the fun.
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