Piers Morgan made a very HUGE mistake while moderating Whitney Houston?s funeral Saturday on CNN. Piers referred to Whitney as having grown up ?in the streets of New Jersey?. Why do shallow people always refer to African American upbringing as having been ?in the streets?? In 2012, it isn?t such a surprise to people that many African Americans grew up privileged. People just want to pretend they don?t know any better. Whitney grew up in a suburban home with a mother, a father and brothers. If American media continues to have such a love affair with British accents, then foreigners like Piers Morgan should be educated before they get on TV here. America already has all the dissention it can handle?and then some. On the other hand, in keeping with the subject of the blog below, the foreigners can?t be trained if the? American people?don?t admit their amnesia.? ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS DID NOT GROW UP ?IN THE STREETS?!! ?Also on High Heels? mind??..
National news media, interracial relationships are nothing new, at least not to ethnic people and people of color. I don?t know what rock some of these programming executives, assignment editors and news producers have been hiding under. For generations, the Caucasian person in a mixed relationship has been more accepted by the ethnic family when they were not accepted by their own family or friends. A recent ABC News report expressed shock and amazement about the soaring (in producer?s opinions) rate of mixed marriages. Maybe this is why producers also believed they were on to something big with TV?s Modern Family. They made sure the show?s characters included a gay relationship and one involving a Latino woman with an older white man. ABC is owned by the same company that owns ESPN: DISNEY, where millions of ethnic children and parents spend fortunes everyday. ?Last week, ESPN had to apologize for a headline that read: ?Chink in the Armor?, referring to the New York Knicks Asian player, Jeremy Lin. The problem with apologies is that the people who apologized knowingly created the slur in the first place. They just thought they might get away with it.
It was in 1986 that I interviewed the singer Sade on my radio show in New York. Knowing that her mother is British and her father, Nigerian, I asked what I thought was a legitimate question:
Me: ?Do you consider yourself Nigerian or British??
Sade: ?I consider myself Sade?
If you think I wasn?t embarrassed by her response, think again. She was so right. What a dumb question and that was 26 years ago. So here we are in 2012 and mixed relationship stories are being presented while we eat dinner as if they were breaking news.
The rising number of visible marriages involving black men and white women is what that report was REALLY all about. It wasn?t about Asian women and white men because there?s nothing new about that matchup. Nor was it about white women and Asian men, even though such a couple was in the first photo of the report. We all know?the white man/black woman duo began generations ago on the plantations when black women were raped by slave owners. A black woman and white man were deemed criminals generations later in Virginia because they married against the law. For years, Native American Indian?children were kidnapped from reservations, illegally adopted and converted to ?other? nationalities and religions.
Those of us who were teenagers in the 60?s remember the culture. People would stare at black men with white women. Black men would try to hide their faces in a kind of embarrassment if seen with a white woman. There was the belief that black women hated white women who went with black men. White women were ostracized for being with black men. They were often considered to be loose or rejects. Mixed relationships are not breaking news today.
In some cases, children of these relationships were eventually embraced by their white relatives because the children were usually unavoidably adorable. Look at the President of the United States? for example. In fact, President Obama is probably the catalyst that prompted the special news report anyway. Remember such stories may be new to news people who have spent their upbringing sheltered from reality, but it?s not new to the millions of Americans who come from multi-racial families. The real sad thing about these mixed relationship stories is that baby boomers know it is old news. Nevertheless, they have relinquished assignment and programming decisions to a generation of copycats.
Hollywood anointed Halle Berry one of the most beautiful women in the world. She?s the product of a mixed marriage. Maya Rudolph gets so much work in Hollywood and she plays race-less characters. She is the product of a mixed marriage. Derek Jeter is definitely one of the greatest athletes of all time and the product of a mixed marriage, so what?s new? America, the double standard is part of life and society, but the racial double standard is tired and old.
It?s been an argument forever and media outlets and Hollywood studios make a weak attempt at staying under the radar by hiring an ethnic person or two, here and there. However, news and programming would be so much better if real people who live real lives would produce real programming. Then maybe the REAL modern multi-racial American family could eat dinner in peace. They would no longer be interrupted by dusty topics and special reports in 2012 that were already old news in 1970. If American media?executives really cared about their viewership, they would never hire a shallow thinking foreigner who still believes all African Americans ??grew up in the streets?. Piers Morgan is no different than Bill O?Reilly?s shock that he received polite, professional service at a Harlem restaurant. However, Bill O?Reilly was already here, so America is stuck with him. These men are both?crusty or crustier than the old crusty stories that the young people they raised are producing.
by Dianne Thompson Stanciel? comments welcome at highheelshotflashes@gmail.com
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Source: http://www.highheelshotflashes.com/2012/02/nothing-new/
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