I spent the better part of last week in Las Vegas, trying to sell my television program, A Room Full of Women. My partner, Deborah Perry, and I, pitched our idea of a diversely moderated women’s political talk show to syndicates and programmers in Las Vegas, and met with people about the possibility of building our show from the ground up. AT the same time, we walked around with wide-open eyes, looking at the other programming that is going to hit the airwaves. Iyanla Vanzant has a new show coming up, produced by Barbara Walters company. Ananda, the young sister who earned her stripes at BET and MTV will be doing something for King World. Hearst Argyle is producing a series that features NAACP President Kweisi Mfume. But an eyeball view of the NATPE (National Association of Television Programming Executives) conference suggested that people of color have a long way to go before we are fully represented on the air.

Soul Train’s Don Cornelius and the NAACP’s Mfume moderated a panel on minorities and television programming. The energy was hot, hot, hot, partly because former California Senator Art Torres was among those who was clear that people of color would get the short end of the loaf unless we speak up. Others on the panel echoed the same point, sharing their frustrations about originating and distributing programming, breaking into prime time, dealing with biases and those who can “green light” projects, and working in alternative media, including the Internet. Kweisi Mfume announced, from the panel, that the NAACP might boycott one of the major networks and its advertisers. It’s about time.

After you sit in the eye of the storm, television takes on a different meaning. I have been thinking about the prime time schedule on the major networks and the messages that are sent by a series of shows that either renders people of color invisible or inferior. We are, on some shows, props at best. I think of a show, for example, like Friends, which has no people of color as primary players, or even secondary players. Or Seinfeld, now in syndication, that blatantly asserted that New York City was a very narrow, very white occasion. To be sure, we can be found on Law and Order (often causing disorder), or in somebody’s emergency room, but when life is light and fluffy, count on us to be missing in action.

That’s the front of the camera. The picture is bleaker behind it. I ran into a young sister who says she wants to write for prime time dramas. She is a graduate of the Bill Cosby writer’s program, and has written samples for a number of the prime time dramas. She can’t get a call back, can’t get a break, but she keeps plugging. We need her sitting around an edit table, providing some reality to those who would attempt to write a multicultural reality with no knowledge of it. We need the producers, directors, and then some. Right not, it isn’t happening.

I left the NATPE conference on a red-eye plane and rolled into my bed at about 10 a.m. on last Thursday morning. Since I’m embracing middle age enthusiastically, I have to say that the good old bod just ain’t what it used to be. Once upon a time, I could fly cross-country and arrive ready to kick a little butt. Now, all I can do is to drag my butt to bed. But that’s another column, another story.

In any case, from my bed I cringed at the white men from Mars, white women from Venus, wondering what Sojourner Truth or someone might say about the way we are depicted on this show. Now I might have gotten Cybil Shepherd on a bad day (from what I hear about her now-cancelled host gig, every day is a bad day), but as far as I am concerned, any screen that is not representative is a bad screen. Except that begs a bunch of questions. Do we want television to reflect our reality, which is sometimes narrow and segregated, or do we want it to project our future, which is clearly multicultural. A television show about the United States Senate ought to be an all-white show, I suppose, because that is what the Senate is, a narrow white (except motorcycle-riding Native American Ben Nighthorse Campbell) occasion. And yet what does an all-white show say about or lives, about our hopes, and about our aspirations.

We have so very much work to do to make images reflect our reality. WE have so very much work to do to claim our space in a multiplicity of institutions. Too many of us won’t do the work - too tired, to jaded, to comfortable. And so we ended up with a Bushman in the White House and with a bunch of white folks on our television screens.

I always tell people that when they look at television, they ought to ask if the characters they watch are people they’d entertain in their homes. If they aren’t, perhaps the show should be turned off, because watching folks you wouldn’t want to know is like allowing pollution to seep into your brain. For people of color watching prime time television, the seepage is great, and the pleasures are few. And that is how it is going to be until we decide to do something about it.

Sun Reporter Newspaper 
January 31, 2001