Looking at Black America, Eyes Fixed on the Future

Looking at Black America, Eyes Fixed on the Future

By NEIL GENZLINGER
Published: July 21, 2009
The first half of “Black in America 2,” a two-night special on Wednesday and Thursday on CNN, begins with a segment in which Soledad O’Brien, the reporter for the series, admonishes some boys in Bushwick, Brooklyn, who ignore their academics to play basketball all day.

Good; the unrealistic dream of pro ball as the ticket out of poverty needs to be knocked down. Of course, Ms. O’Brien’s scolding would be more convincing if the next night’s episode did not included a lengthy piece about Tyler Perry. So, kids, let’s review: Don’t aspire to play pro basketball; you’ll never make it. Instead count on becoming a movie star/entertainment mogul.
So it goes in this skim-the-surface program, a follow-up to “Black in America” last year. Wednesday’s installment is devoted to “Tomorrow’s Leaders” and Thursday’s to “Today’s Pioneers,” but both are essentially collections of upbeat features, anecdotes without much analysis as to whether these piecemeal efforts are making a long-term difference. The message to viewers is, in effect: “See? Someone in California is helping inmates transition back into the workforce when they’re released, and Chris Rock’s wife is taking those Brooklyn kids on a trip to South Africa to broaden their perspective. So everything’s O.K. in black America.”

Not that the initiatives Ms. O’Brien spotlights aren’t worthy. Mr. Rock’s wife, Malaak Compton-Rock, certainly did a fine thing last year by taking 30 Bushwick youngsters to South Africa and turning the tables on them: instead of being on the receiving end of assistance, they were on the giving end, visiting families affected by AIDS. But Ms. O’Brien undercuts any heft this and other segments might build up by shamelessly injecting herself into the proceedings. Do we really need to see her having a heart-to-heart with one of the Bushwick children and personally wiping the girl’s tears?

The creep of this kind of it’s-really-about-me journalism appears to be inexorable, but it costs “Black in America 2” some credibility. So does Ms. O’Brien’s interviewing. It used to be that the old reporter’s trick of leading interview subjects to say what you want them to say would be disguised by deft editing. Not here, as we see in a segment in which Ms. O’Brien talks to Everett Highbaugh about a client in his inmate-assistance program in Oakland, Calif., who is in danger of backsliding:
Ms. O’Brien: “He doesn’t have a tight plan.”
Mr. Highbaugh: “He doesn’t have a real tight plan.”
Ms. O’Brien: “And that worries you.”
Mr. Highbaugh: “And that worries me.”
Ms. O’Brien: “He’s got a general, vague plan.”
Mr. Highbaugh: “A general, vague plan. That just worries me.”
So come to this program for some heartening examples of people who are responsible for relatively small efforts against big problems. But expect only one revelation: that the “Black in America” concept needs to be put out of its misery. When poor urban children are crammed under the same umbrella as rich debutantes, as they are here, it’s a good sign that you have an artificial construct. Being black, or anything else, in America is far more complicated than one demographic characteristic.

BLACK IN AMERICA 2
CNN, Wednesday night at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time. Thursday night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.
Produced by CNN Productions. Soledad O’Brien, anchor and special correspondent; Mark Nelson, vice president and senior executive producer; Jeffery Reid, executive producer; Jody Gottlieb, executive director.


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