Black History Beyond February

Black History Month has arrived; let’s see your black pride. As we enter another February, we will witness an onslaught of black pride. While I am never against black pride in Anyway shape or form, there is a need for black pride all year long. Recently Rosa Parks received the honor of being the first black woman to have a full body statue on Capitol Hill and will also be the face on the next series of forever stamps. With President Obama's second term many black Americans have concluded that all the issues with race have been solved. I however find this to be quite the contrary. The former overt attacks against African Americans have taken a more inside approach.
While there will be an influx of black media during the month of February, one wonders, where are all the black faces are during the rest of the year.

There has been a serious decline of quality black television, movies and print advertising since the 1990's. During the early 90’s there was at least 10 all black casted shows on major networks. “An examination of the networks’ current primetime lineups produces similar results concerning the quality and quantity of African American oriented programs. None of the three major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have a show involving predominantly African American characters.” (Woodard) There has been an even more decline of black actors in movies television programs and advertisements in print and through visual means. In the music industry many black artists are developing a trend of crossing over into the pop department. “In early 2000, states A Piece in the Hollywood Reporter blacks played 15% of roles in film and TV. Today it has fallen to 13%.” (Thompson) My issue however is not with the pop genre but with musicians and producers not finding traditionally, black music “sound and soul”, marketable. What was once a treasured sound has now become a rarity among popular black artists.

During the summer of 2012, a campaign began to prove to advertisers that black media is a worthwhile investment. The campaign came to be known as "in the black", its target goal was to prove to investors that black America was a worthwhile target of consumers. One ideal way to track black consumers was to create, advertisements, in print and online that featured and catered to the African American community. The campaign would also promote more black businesses and television programs that centered on the African American community. There has been no report of the results yielded by the campaign since July 2012.

What will be left of our history and culture if we continue in the habit of selling our soul so to speak for bigger bucks, and both lighter sounds and faces. In reality, the black faces we do tend to see throughout the year in the media are rarely readily identifiably African American. We as consumers need to demand more of quality black entertainment. In a popular USA Network television series, Suits paralegal, Rachel Zane played by Meghan Markle is one of the few black characters on the show. Since the shows airing in June 2011, it was hard to identify her ethnicity. It isn't until the January 31, 2013 episode where we meet her clearly black father played by Wendell Pierce. Those of us who are or plan to be in the media industry should work to create mores spaces for African American faces, history, culture and entertainment.