Sunday, December 16, 2012

Truest statement of the week II


Letting CNN explain to us what it means to be black in America is about as smart as chickens choosing Popeye's to teach their history. To nobody's surprise, the latest installment of CNN's “ Black in America” spoke more to white perceptions of blackness and black history than it did to actual black experiences. This episode's focus on what Zora Neale Hurston called “the tragic mulatto” revisits what's always been chiefly a white obsession, rather than any central fact of African American life, and offers a fake history of the origin of the so-called “one drop rule” which makes anybody with detectable African ancestry in the US considered black. 

-- Bruce A, Dixon, "CNN's Black In America: What Happens When Popeye's Teaches Chickens History & Current Events" (Black Agenda Report).