Black Power, Civil Rights, Black history, and anything related to the empowerment of black people. From Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, we are interested in what empowers our people.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals knows how to grab attention. And show off its laundry.
The animal rights group, which every year stages a protest at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, had two of its members dress in Ku Klux Klan garb outside Madison Square Garden on Monday.
Their goal, according to a post on the PETA website, was to draw a parallel between the KKK and the American Kennel Club. "Obviously it's an uncomfortable comparison," PETA spokesman Michael McGraw told the Associated Press.
But the AKC is trying to create a "master race" when it comes to pure-bred dogs, he added. "It's a very apt comparison."
The group passed out brochures implying the Klan and AKC have the goal of "pure bloodlines" in common.
"I can't speak for everyone, but the vast majority of the people exhibiting and handling and showing at Westminster are more interested in the health of dogs than anything else," Westminster spokesman David Frei told the AP.
"We want to produce the next generation of healthy and happy dogs," he said, "not just for the show ring but for the couches at home."
Bystander Fatima Walden told the AP the KKK imagery was inappropriate no matter what the message.
"They could have used something else as an example," she said. "You should be considerate to everybody."
Other than a shouting match during the hour-long protest, police said the scene remained calm.
In approximately 42 minutes, Life on Mars, a new ABC TV series, sought to do the impossible: Rewrite Black history. On Nov. 6th, ABC broadcast an episode called, Things to Do in New York When You Think You're Dead. The premise of this particular episode was centered on emerging racial tensions within Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, following the death of a 9-year old Black girl –believed to have been murdered by a Puerto Rican man. This watered-down version of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing was, I presume, intended to promoted dialogue around issues of inter-racial fellowship. Unfortunately, such megalomaniac decisions by big-media companies have only, historically, intensified the problem. It’s like MSNBC claiming its exploitation of incarcerated inmates in the Lockdown series is only a means to an end of educating younger people of the dangerous and horrific conditions of prison life. Or worse, BET intimating that its obsession with the American Gangster series is a way of informing young Black and Brown kids of the history and peril of gang deathstyle. In short, such inference is devoid of logic.
In the ABC-produced episode, the infamous Black Liberation Army made a cameo. This time, neither Mutulu Shakur nor Geronimo Pratt was featured. Instead, ABC, in true corporate fashion, hired a couple of hefty looking Black men, whose portrayal as thugs with no conscience goes against everything the BLA really stood – and still stands – for. Those who know the history of the Black Panther Party are profoundly aware of the strict level of discipline exhibited by both the BLA and the BPP. But ABC wouldn’t take this into consideration. Why would they? Aren’t lies the new truth? Throughout the drama-filled episode, the fictional Black Liberation Army conducted themselves like rogues. ABC’s version of the inner-city missionaries seemed to be more obsessed with street justice and irrational conclusions, than the liberation of their people. With ABC’s ongoing revision of history, it seemed appropriate when a high-heel-mini-skirt-wearing “sistah” was trotted out as the legal representative of the arrested BLA members. Once again, it doesn’t take a fifth grader to track the inconsistencies involved in this farce of a show. ABC’s depiction of Black Panther Party female members, à la Saffiya Bukhari (God rest her soul) and Assata Shakur, as scantily-clad-Hip-Hop-video -eye-candies is a spit in the face of history. No doubt, this was intentional. Sensationalism (otherwise known as, distortion) in Hollywood has always received the green light (Spike Lee’s Malcolm X is a picture perfect example).
In the infantile mind of ABC’s production staff, Black liberation is acceptably reduced to an over-saturation of Afros, the word “dig,” and street-thuggery. Isn’t it interesting that the same media outlet (ABC) which commissioned the demonization of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright – for his gospel of Black Liberation Theology – saw it fit to rewrite the entire history of the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s?
Worse than the blatant alteration of history is ABC’s cavalier attitude toward escalating tensions between Black and Brown communities, which has played itself out dramatically in recent history. ABC’s exploitation of the conflict between Black and Brown communities is, sadly to report, normative in the media beltway – especially at moments with healing on the horizon. The media has a long tradition of inflaming rising heights of racial tension. Right-wing ideologues like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage and Michael Reagan have built successful careers of doing just that. It is no wonder that the same white-media, which revels in indiscipline and self-absorption, is, at this moment, declaring to the world that Black people have overcome every impediment that might seek to limit their progress. One Newspaper would even declare racism a “myth.” Such hubristic calculations by the same people who advertised slave auctions on their papers is to be expected, but a non-reaction from the progressive Black and Brown communities would only lend credence to cooperate networks such as ABC, in prolonging the accepted tradition of rewriting and redefining history. To put it bluntly, big-name media is like cancer in the lungs of a new born: No good shall come out it.
