DISQUS

Irami · 1 year ago

Thanks for taking time to do this. For all the hype, I thought the program would be investigated by companymen, replete with doofi like T.D. Jakes and Roland Martin. This sounds better than I thought it would be.

blacksmythe · 1 year ago

I'm going to do the same thing with the show tonight. And then try to synthesize it somehow. To be honest I thought the show was awful, but because I was trying to write as it happened I couldn't convey it. A nice 2 hour jack move.....

DLT · 1 year ago

Thanks for the commentary.

Inger · 1 year ago

Les,
Thanks for putting my thoughts to type... I completely agree that it was hard to make sense of this series because it was ALL OVER THE MAP! I didn't see any balance in the reporting. It was so negative and depressing that I almost turned it off. There wasn't a large enough focus on the many gains being made in the African American community despite all the structural racism that workks against certain progress. Solada did a poor job of connecting the dots. The scatter plot reporting is haphazzard and only leads to confusion. I had a headache after watching. I couldn't make sense of it. I was so tired of the apple cap dude who was used for the black female/family???? Why not a black female poet? The segments didn't concentrate on the black female and there was no thread uniting all the segments. Were the producers on crack? With all the focus on single female headed housholds how did they manage to find a man running from eviction? I don't know what's on the cutting room floor but I wish the whole series was. Why so much focus on the biracial white ancestory stuff. I had forgotten about the Rands and lo and behold she raps the program up with them. I wish she would have called me for help. I would have helped her make links. WHy didn't they use the rands and tell how their individual stories correlate with the many stories throughout the community. WHy couldn' tthey show how the rands due to Great granny being Afircan American lineage encountered realities much diffferent from the white branch of the family tree. Why couldn't she compare and contrast the statics of the two branches, perhaps showing the number of people incarcerated on the white branch opposed to the black. The number of single parent run households, college graduates, access to health care. I think that would have been more documentary worthy. It definitely would have linked the current situation to enslavement and it's residual affects. I was hopeful throughout, waiting for some credible links but was let down in the end with more of the same - negative steriotypical portrayals of our families. What about gradmothers that have been there for so many women? What about how the extended family structure takes on children and relatives? What about the high rate of adoption of black children by black families? What about the many community programs that churches provide? What about the increase in black lawyers, doctors and professionals across the board? What about....what about- I am veering into Janet Jackson song about domestic violence, maybe because this series reminds me of that. Our community is being abused once again by ourselves and the media. We must stop this cycle of violence. We must say NO to the negative reporting under the guise of "documentary"!!!!!!!!!

Kim Pearson · 1 year ago

Well done. The one thing I would mention is that high fat diets are indeed related to cancer, but maybe you didn't mean that literally. Of course, the fact that decent grocery stores serving affordable fresh food are scarce in some neighborhoods is a key issue.