Blackout

THIS WEEK, National Public Radio announced that it was canceling the Black-oriented news program News & Notes. Isak blogger Anna Clark nicely captures the relevance of this decision: "The thought that it goes off the air on March 20, just a couple months after the first black president is horribly ironic." This is part of a larger layoff wave by NPR, which, like many not-for-profits, is being hit hard by the economic downturn. NPR's Day to Day is also getting the ax, as is Next Generation Radio, an NPR initiative designed to mentor young journalists, the bulk of whom are persons of color, as reported by Richard Prince at The Maynard Institute.

But hey, why worry about this when the thrilling next season of ABC's flagship patriarchal, phallocentric and otherwise voyeuristic The Bachelor starts on January 5 (check out the website for a clock that actually counts down the seconds until the premier). The twist this year: the guy is a single father.


Oh, yeah, we have a suggestion for a twist. It's a little nutty. Are you ready? Why not have the person in the position of power be a racial minority?

There have been about a dozen seasons of The Bachelor and about a third as many season of The Bachelorette (that's a point of discussion in and of itself), and none of them has featured a person of color in the position of being the one to do the choosing. In fact, to the best of our knowledge, there has not been a person of color chosen by any of the "deciders," nor has there been a person of color who made it past the second or third rounds of elimination.

People of color almost ALWAYS make it past the first round. After all, it would appear to be racist for the White chooser to eliminate a person of color without first getting to know him or her, right? Of course, it's offensive to eliminate any person on those grounds, but political correctness will generally serve to "protect" non-Caucasians from the first-round cuts. After that, it's safe to let them go without feeling like race had anything to do with it.

But wait, you say. There are Black "deciders" on these Cinderella-style love programs! What about Flavor Flav's Flavor of Love and the spinoff I Love New York on VH1? The racial composition of these programs is almost always inverse: there are "token" White competitors vying for the attention of the person in power.

The difference, however, is that these programs all operate within the wider context of a racist culture, so that 1) the segregation of the programs serves as a reminder of how disconnected Whites and nonWhites are in American culture, and 2) the "Black" programs are marginalized to cable music networks while the "mainstream" programs land on a major network, get promoted by the network morning "news" programs (in this case, Good Morning America), etc. Further, these programs are popular with White audiences largely because the characters' behaviors fit nicely withing the framework of how Whites expect African Americans to behave. Dave Chappelle quit his Comedy Central show when he came to believe that White folks might be laughing at him instead of with him. Flavor Flav does not appear to have that sort of ethical standard.

Though we have not heard much about it lately, there have been thoughtful public discussions about the role of racial minorities in entertainment sources such as television and film. Opportunity for advancement and notoriety is one element, but a more pressing element of the discussion is the portrayal of racial minorities. The issue is less about how many Latinos, Asians and African Americans appear in prominent series (or in prominent roles on those series), but rather how dynamic those characters are. The real transformational characters are those in which the minority status is not a defining feature of the character beyond the point that it would be a defining feature in real life. In other words, there is value to the doctor who is Black that far outweighs the existence of "the Black doctor," who embodies numerous stereotypes (both positive and negative) that reside in the White imagination.

Having a racial minority in the starring role on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette would mean that the audience would either have to 1) be comfortable with and be supportive of the proposition of an interracial relationship or 2) be at ease with a primarily "minority" reality program on primetime television. We're guessing that ABC's market research team has indicated that neither is likely, and in an economic environment where even publicly subsidized (though to an embarrassingly low level) programming that focuses on racial minorities is being cast aside like so many brothers and sisters left standing without a rose (sorry -- we couldn't help ourselves), there is little chance that a major network will take a chance to make a progressive statement.

We remain concerned about a larger problem that these moves might signify, though: Now that the first racial minority president is about to assume the presidency, White producers, writers and, most important, audience members, might start to believe that there is no longer a need to provide conscious attempts at focusing on presenting racial minorities as other-than-static caricatures. As we noted last month, Barack Obama's election and service as president has the potential to result in a backslide if we are not dilligent in being thoughtful about the big picture.