Was July Black Appreciation Month and No One told Me?!? (Part III)

A month in review
CNN Presents: Black in America.

The three segments featured were The Black Woman & Family, The Black Man, and King Assassination. While I appreciate the Special Report and the manner in which Soledad O’Brien went about presenting the segments, I must say, nothing in the reports was new information to me. I suppose some of the information came as a surprise to some people, I was just not one of those individuals. I am not sure what I was expecting to see when I clicked on the tube, but it certainly was not Black People 101. I felt like the miniseries was the equivalent of taking an introductory course to a foreign culture, except that I am native, making it all redundant. Nothing new or profound was presented in the series. As bad as it might sound, I did not even want to watch after the first episode. It seemed like a waste of time to sit and watch a long documentary/discussion that was presenting old information. (I did stop watching after the second segment, sorry Dr. King) As much as I wanted to support the special series by giving them my ratings, I had studying to do – would hate to become a statistic of unfulfilled potential.

I sincerely appreciate the effort put forth by CNN and Ms O’Brien to even undertake such an initiative. It is not an easy task, and for a first shot at it, it was not too bad. I think the only surprising part of the documentary was that the overly verbose Reverend Dr. Michael Eric Dyson has a younger brother in jail for life (the situation in and of itself is not surprising, I just did not know Dyson was in that situation). And Soledad…talk about a no-holds-bar approach… [Soledad to Dyson’s brother] “So basically you helped destroy and corrupt the community you brother was working so hard to build up. How does that make you feel?” A little rough there Soledad, don’t you think? But, she did keep it real and avoided beating around the bush, which I appreciate. And I did chuckle when my man Dr. Cornel West began talking about the genius of the fool that is Lil’ Wayne. That discussion was, in my words, priceless! lol

My friend wrote a blog about this same issue. Check it out. He has much more to say about the subject than me. I think the word I would use to describe CNN's documentary is underwhelming. Nope, I'm not even sure that is a word, but I do feel that it is highly applicable in this situation. Actually, in my review, we are 2 for 3 for underwhelming appreciation of Black America (CNN and ah-hem AMA apology ::cough cough::), with Vogue Italia as the outlier (thank you, Vogue Italia!)...Ummmm...Do better, America.