TBTNEWS ALERTDon't Believe the HYPE!
Black folks, we must change the narrative. Be a leader and stop
following the mainstream media's projection of black life; denounce the Sunday
night, Monday morning crime reports delivered to the black community and the
world. We do our community absolutely NO justice by continuing to highlight and
profile the bad and ignore the wonderfully good things that happens every
weekend. In particularly, the most recent weekends.
I attended several graduations over the last two weekends and I'll
give commence addresses at two schools over the next several weeks. And when you
drive down streets of Chicago, there are balloons flying high and limos parked
out front of houses where emerging young leaders are about to attend
graduations, and or proms. These last few weekends, there have been hundreds of
high schools, grade schools and colleges that presented tens of thousands of
young people who walked stages receiving diplomas and certificates of excellence
with hundreds of family members and friends cheering them on.
Black media and black themed media have done more harm to create this
negative narrative about black lives than even mainstream media. We expect
mainstream media, through decades of misleading, wrong and total ignorance of
the black community all the together, to deliver the kind of negative content
and images about our community. It's no surprise, coming from them. But we must
expect more from minority media than what's being presented.
We once had positive images delivered to us by the Chicago Defender and
Ebony/Jet, weekly,
daily or monthly. But now black media and its personalities seems to get more
buzz from the insanely negative and distorted images of beautiful black people
everywhere. They ignore the very men and women (guardians) who are raising those
same kids going on proms and graduations from institutions like Urban Prep,
Betty Shabazz, and Noble Charter, along with the thousands of Chicago Public
Schools who are in the process of organizing massive graduations throughout the
city. And stats show that CPS and other schools have seen graduation-rate
increases.
Why has mainstream media decided to now focus their shortened man
power coverage on black crime? Ask yourself that question. Will you? Reports
show that national crime is down nearly 35%. And Chicago, we should be able to
remember when in the 80's and 90's, the yearly violent death notices ranged in
the 800 - 950 number (400 - 450 today). Black folks got very little to no media
coverage, compared to what we're getting today. This goes with my Publisher's Peace
yesterday; this inclusion of negative black life in the media is meant to dilute
the minds and destroy the mental capacity of a people who've seen enormous gains
across this country. The Negro struggle is noted and respected.
These negative violent crime projections distributed 24/7 is used to
halt or slow down the growth of black lives. It's mainly used to change the
narrative in our community that we can't live in harmony and peace. Which, if
you're smart, intelligent and practical, you know that black lives matter, and
we currently live respectful and productive lives - every day. It's also used to
contribute to the middle-class' reasoning of rejecting and turning their backs
on black youth - the very people who we say are our most important investment
and asset.
We need not have to explain our existence on this planet to anyone!
The only people we should answer to is our children. They didn't choose to enter
this world, the parents made that choice for them. Therefore, our youthful black
children are the only people that matter. We owe then, not the general public,
who look to see us in compromising positions, and our ancestors struggles
devalued. Don't believe the HYPE! - Carl
D.West
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