RF23 - WHAT ABOUT BLACK MEN/BOYS THAT ROCK?

Last night, I happened to catch the butt end of BET's Black Girls Rock. The show was about celebrating young ladies who are making a difference in their communities by various act of charity or starting programs that could assist others.

Fine..Kudos ...hooray...clap, clap, clap.

What I have a problem with, is that the show was on BET, yes, the same BET that has the award show, that once had rapper Drake and Lil Wayne out there rapping, with [black] girls between the age of 7-10 years of age on the stage.  They used bleeped out b-words and bleeped out h-words. The same BET whose programming is responsible for more junk on its music videos and reality T.V. programming. Yet somehow, we're supposed to be so happy and prideful that for one day, they stopped and honored

Black girls..

Fine, kudos, hooray, clap, clap, clap.

Here's an issue, while partly watching the show, I happened to catch an article by Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post, where he wrote that movies by Tyler Perry portray black men, as adulterous, abusers of women and/or drugs or criminals. He asked where are the movies about positive black men who overcome odds from their various backgrounds. Hell, the last movie that was close to that was "Antoine Fisher," and I think before that was "Men of Honor" in honor of the Navy's first diver, the late Carl Brashear. Before that it was Principal Joe Clark on " Lean on Me" and that's it. But there is one problem, none of those movies were by Tyler Perry. So now I'm stuck agreeing with a columnist, I don't care for, due to his liberal, victicrat writings. And who knows, I may have been lured into one of his woe is me, us articles by noticing that Perry only does "black chick flicks" that demoralize men. But hey! BET was celebrating Black Girls that Rock.

Isn't it about time to celebrate Black Boys That Rock? Isn't it time to show our young black men that there is more out there for them, but gangs, carrying the rock up and down a football field or basketball court or carrying the rock to be sold. Our young black men and boys are hurting, they are facing high unemployment rates, some lag in education and unfortunately a good part of them are coming in and out prisons. Is this their only fate?

It ain't right.

But of course, it must be right for BET and its executives to maintain the stereotype that our black young men and boys are a bunch of n-word, b-word, h-word using, saggin' pants and pick a color rag wearing thugs that can play football or basketball and oh yeah..

commit crimes.

Clap, clap, clap.

Article:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/07/AR2010110704428.html