A couple of thoughts here as George Kelly (AllaboutGeorge.com blog) and colleagues prepare for Monday's "Blogging While Black" panel, 11:30am-12:30pm, at SxSW in Austin, Tx... I hear some folks have asked "why does it matter whether a blogger is Black?" And I concur, with another question: Why does it matter that we all still need to breath oxygen while blogging?? These are things that just are. Some of us reading this are righthanded, and I'm a [Black, female] lefthanded person writing this. So for me it does matter which side of the keyboard the mouse is on, yet so many of us are inconvenienced by known & unknown others who always and only connect mice - & usually on a short bit of cable - on the righthand side of a keyboard. In conducting one's daily life all over the world there are quite a few "inconveniences" - and far worse - that lefties notice that most righthanded people do not. Now on to the search for Black Americans on U.S. television in the 1950s, 60s, and today. For most of the 1950s and shown in re-runs into the 60s, about the only regular place to find Black Americans on daytime U.S. t.v. was a show called "Amos 'n Andy." It was a comedy. Ha ha ha. For some reason, Black American stories disproportionately are lumped into "comedy." In spite of how skewed it is to constantly laugh at an entire population of people and to perceive them only as 'amusement' or as objects of derision, I enjoyed that show although I didn't yet realise the U.S. and global situations of discrimination and exclusion facing Blacks and other people of colour. And yet I do not think it should be impossible to view Amos 'n Andy publicly (i.e., keep it banned/entirely off the air). I think it should be available for public purchase - and preferably shown in situations where there is study and critical discussion of the show's incredible stereotypes. In the 1950s and 60s most American families gathered together every evening around a single family television and watched the same program[me]s... completely different from our viewing/living habits today. The big difference for Black Americans was that when we gathered around the t.v. we virtually never saw anyone who looked like us. And when a Black person finally did show up on t.v. every now and then, the family member who happened to see the apparition would literally shout to tell everyone in the house to come and see - "There's a colored person on t.v.!!" I'm neither joking nor exaggerating.
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