told ya

As Mara Brock Akil's The Game--the last black show on the CW (unless you include ANTM)--prepares for its exodus (which I'm not sad about since I find the show insipid), I want to repost this prediction via my old 4coloredgirls blog:

Friday, June 09, 2006

network integration

What happens when a black network merges with a white one? The CW. UPN has been the designated black network after the death of The Cosby Show and A Different World and after FOX made a name for its network and then drop-kicked all its black shows and the WB followed suit; it had a line-up of black comedies including the Steve Harvey Show and the Jamie Foxx Show until the network drew an audience, then gradually Dawson's Creek, Seventh Heaven and One Tree Hill recolored and reaudienced that station. It's like network gentrification.
Besides The Gilmore Girls (which the CW is keeping), I find most of the shows on the WB trite and boring and aside from Everybody Hates Chris and Girlfriends (also slated for slots on the new network), the UPN doesn't offer up much for TIVO either. I wonder what will happen after the CW is on the air for a season or two. Will "black" and "white" shows exist side by side in a network racial utopia? Will there be gradual white flight from the screen? Or will a bunch of black actors be out of jobs until an"Other" network wants to put itself on the map (ding ding ding)?

"Say it plain, that many have died for this day"

A dream, a speech, a praisesong, a rhyme. The day after the commemoration of Martin Luther King's birth, and almost 45 years since he dreamed, we marched. Black, white, yellow, brown, red, old, young, straight, gay, trans, on feet, some aided by canes or wheelchairs, we who had had the audacity to hope let out a collective exhale.

He who had inspired us to chose "hope over fear," spoke to us who had gathered in his honor, his mouth--not filled with false promises but with a clear articulation of the challenges ahead. He who asked us to hope and to demand change charged us to remember that we are that hope and we are that change.

She praised the words/people/workers of the everyday. She conjured the dead who had toiled and prayed so that we might dream, hope, and live. She announced bravely that love is a/the political act.

He prayed for healing and union--to "turn to each other, not on each other." He reminded us that though "we have come over a way that with tears has been watered," we are not finished. We have only just begun.

A Woman's Work

Is there still a distinction between women's work and men's? Today's NY times op-ed by Linda Hirshman suggests that there is. Hirschman claims that President-elect Obama's plan to create new jobs will only benefit men if he focuses solely on infrastructure and engineering. Hirschman's observation that women continue to pursue human oriented professions, such as teaching and social work, doesn't seem to be shifting very much if my students are any indication, though I do encounter a number of female students who are pre-med and pre-law as well. Are women socialized into professions that require human engagement or are these students simply persuing what they are interested in? Probably a bit of both. I do hope, along with Hirschman, that some of the new administration's job creation money is put into libraries and schools, not necessarily because women work there, but because these institutions are as crucial to our survival as roads and bridges.

A Mercy

I ushered in this week by going to hear Toni Morrison read from her long-awaited new novel A Mercy. Described as a novel about slavery before slavery became racialized, the story captures readers from the first line: "Don't be afraid." Hearing Morrison read her own words of course is an added treat. I even managed to ask the author a question about the traveling women in her novels, a subject I'm fascinated with and writing about myself. Morrison says she finds it interesting to craft a story around a woman not only traveling alone but propelled by passion. I can't wait to find out where that passionate journey takes her.

wooo!!!

Yes We Did!!!

history's poetics

When I approached PS 136 this morning, the line almost reached the end of the block. It was one of the longest I've ever stood in (and my academic meanderings have meant that I've had to vote in several states). I thought immediately of Freedom Summer and those brave college students and elders who faced down death just so they could have a voice and make our country live up to its promises of democracy. I had no such fears of assault and I had the "leisure" to wait in line for hours if need be. My class is not until late afternoon and if I had to, I could cancel it. But I thought about so many others who have to be at work "on time" or who have to pick up their children from school (as I overheard a passer-by yelling in her cell phone that she could not wait because she needed to retrieve her children and I quietly hoped she would get them, bring them back and join us in line). We have come far since the summer of 1964, but we still have farther to go before everyone has a voice in our democracy.

I walked through the doors of PS 136 to meet a sketch of Martin Luther King Jr. To the left of his head was a painted American flag. Beneath his visage, an excerpt of his "I Have a Dream" speech. While I do not like to wax sentimental about that singular speech (that tends to fix King in a moment in time), I could not help but feel that so many of us gathered on this historic day--newly naturalized Americans, native New Yorkers, and transplants (like me), black and white, old and young, abled and differently abled--were excited to be a part of something larger than our individual selves; a number of people after voting even walked out of that school exclaiming with glee. And it's not about investing hope in one man, in Barack Obama. It's that a wave of change is in the air and it's so palpable that we can feel it all around us. It's not even just about the U.S. The world is watching and waiting. His brilliance aside, Barack is a symbol of the change a number of us have been waiting for and that we all must work to make a reality. We have the power to shape history and we can start with today.

say it together with feeling