A Scarcity of Information

I've had a lot of discussions about the black church in recent weeks.

Thanks to the hoopla surrounding Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama, race and religion have been frequent topics of converstaion with my family and friends. I've also watched way too many television personalities try to provide astute analysis.

The experience has left me with one dominant thought; there are too few black voices providing good information on television.

A few years ago I would have just said there were too few black voices on television, period. Thankfully, the complaints of minority viewers have been heard, and every cable news station has scooped up a few token black people to provide political commentary and analysis. Asians and Latinos are still excluded, but at least one minority group has a seat at the table.

However, Obama's political campaign has proven that the voices allowed to break through on mainstream television do not come close to representing the whole spectrum of black thought. Look, I think cats like Roland Martin and Eugene Robinson do a great job of providing opinions from a black perspective, but their burden is too heavy. Not only do they have to stretch themselves to be interesting and informative, they also have to counteract the rampant coonery of people like Juan Williams, Larry Elder and whoever else Fox News trots out.

More importantly, it's ridiculous to expect every black person to be an expert on every "black" topic. This latest foolishness about Pastor Wright has only proven how far black analysts have had to stretch.

As I watched television these past few weeks, I grew increasingly tired of listening to people parrot the meme that Pastor Wright's comments were just something you find in the black church. Every time I heard somebody make that point I wanted to smack them in face and remind them that every black church is not the same.

Black churches, like black people, come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. Little storefront churches, massive mega-churches, historical churches, mission-based churches, new school, old school and everything else on the religious spectrum can be found in the black community. I've been to black churches where they never mentioned politics and the sermons were always from familiar biblical passages. I've been to other churches where the preacher's exegesis included the Greek roots of words and was liberaled sprinkled with historical and political nuggets.

Some black churches have flourishing community ministries that are often on the cutting edge when it comes to serving the whole Christian. Other churches strictly have Sunday School and BTU, and anything else is sacrilegious. Do people even realize that there are still many rural black churches that share a pastor and can only have church service a couple Sundays out of the month?

Not only was I disappointed to see so many black analysts rejecting many of Wright's statements outright, I was angry that those individuals who tried to defend his comments used so many stereotypes about our community. I understand that television does not provide a lot of time to break down topics, but it seemed like many of these people weren't even trying to move away from the accepted discussion points.

That's the challenge for black people allowed to attain positions of influence or power. And I purposely used the word "allowed" because it's still the reality of our world that qualifications alone do not provide black people with opportunities.

Prominent black folks have to validate certain accepted "truths" to avoid being marginalized and denied their platform. However, those accepted "truths" always reflect the mainstream, or white, perspective, and severely limit the productivity of any discussion. It's much more difficult to point out the evil that has been done in America's name across the world when your first comment always has to be that America is a great country.

In my short time blogging, and much longer time reading blogs, I've run across some incredibly intelligent and insightful people. And trust me, given the very high opinion I have of my own intelligence, it means something when I compliment other people. These individuals are writing blog posts and making comments every day that prove they have a great grasp on the political and racial realities in this country. But, their insights typically are confined to like-minded readers on the web.

Straight up, that sucks.

The web is cool. It's really cool. But, as my brother pointed out to me, comparing the number of people reached on the web to the people reached by television is like comparing Justin Timberlake to Prince. Even Gov. Paterson could see it just doesn't add up.

Individuals who would never check out The Field Negro, Too Sense, Jack and Jill Politics or even my blog, watch television incessantly. And the opinions that are dominating television are also dominating radio and the print media. There is a serious problem in this country when it comes to mainstream information options.

In a world where a huge variety of people are finding their voices, the entities that can scream the loudest are all saying the same thing.