An important blog post on CNN's Black in America from a gay man's perspective. I've been resisting saying much about this program given that we'll be meeting this weekend to discuss it, but damn! this was good.

Contemplating my response to CNN's Black in America series, I was reminded of something W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in the "Souls of Black Folk" published in 1903:

How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word. And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,--peculiar even for one who has never been anything else.

To be Black in America in 2008 means a "news" network has the audacity to present the Black American experience with all its diversity of genealogical, ethnic, economic, social, religious, regional, and sexual orientation in a 3-hour documentary. In CNN's view, it is a community riddled with problems, where even those who make it struggle with our identity and are seldom very far for the maladies of our brothers and sisters.

The program was divided into two portions: Black women/families and Black men. At no point did they discuss the reality of being "other" in terms of sexual orientation...about the hypocrisy of "Don't ask/Sing well" that has gay men and women relegated to the music department without being able to proclaim who they love and who they are. CNN didn't discuss the clash between the conventional Black Church and its gay members.

Very disappointing.

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