CNN gets ambitious with “Black in America” special, while MSNBC takes a peek at “Multicultural in America”

Once upon a time I was required to write a 30-page thesis paper on a topic in journalism. So I got this great idea: I would write about the Internet’s effect on print media.

Long story short, my adviser rejected the proposal and with good reason.

See, you can’t sum up what the Internet is doing to print media in 30 pages. He said I could write a 400-page book on that and still not have covered everything.

I narrowed my topic way down and that’s when I realized: In researching and news reporting, sometimes less is more.

When I decided to watch videos and read stories from CNN’s special report “Black in America,” I wondered why such a broad topic was attempted in four hours.

It seems that all of a sudden, whether it’s because a black man is getting closer to moving into the White House or some new push for social awareness just hit the ground, two major news networks have invested time and money in seeking to explain what it means to be “Black in America” (CNN), and “Multicultural in America” (MSNBC). It may be coincidental, but Congress also passed a resolution last week apologizing for slavery. But I digress.

MSNBC’s “Multicultural in America” went to the homes of  multicultural viewers who shared some joy and awkwardness that come from a merger of cultures. As a multiracial person, I understood what each person was describing. But I think it was a safer approach than CNN’s “Black” venture because it was more conversational and focused more on the positive. I liked that it didn’t attempt too much at one sitting. We just need to see this stuff more frequently.

CNN’s report was a bit more in-depth. It profiled black people who were struggling to get by. It also interviewed a few prominent African-American figures in their attempt  to illustrate the struggles that those with dark skin have to overcome. For the most part it concentrated on the negative aspects of being black — how many are living in poverty with no health care and poor education options in single-parent households.

I live in Detroit. I don’t need CNN to tell me it’s rough for blacks out here. Then again, the target audience was not poor black people, even though that’s who they’re profiling. So maybe a better title and angle for the report would have been ”What happens to a race in the face of discrimination” or “What racism has done to blacks in America.”

There needs to be something that would remind people that being black in America doesn’t mean being poor and uneducated, but rather that many blacks are subjected to this because of a biased —  sometimes racist — white institution. As much as we’d like to bury the past, African-Americans are still suffering from the aftermath of slavery.

It may have been more effective if some of the everyday challenges that both black and white people encounter could be quantified in a way that truly illustrates the disparity between both groups in their respective categories: white rich and poor versus black rich and poor.

The show was made as a tutorial geared for an audience that is on the outside looking in. That’s important to understand when watching it.

The truth is there is no way any writer or videographer can define what either of these topics — being multicultural or being black — mean in four hours or less. This sort of reporting should be done every day so we don’t need these  oversimplified “specials.”  There isn’t a special for whites in America. That wouldn’t be special. It’s on every day.

I think part of what was missing from the CNN and the MSNBC reports is the analytical aspect to these topics. Sure, they presented the problems, but it ended there. It should have gone something like: These are the problems blacks/multicultural people face; let’s investigate why it is this way. Let’s create a forum to talk about institutionalized racism and how to work together to recognize and stop it.

Or is that too hot for TV?

In all seriousness, though, I have to give credit to CNN and MSNBC for even covering such a touchy issue as race in America. It’s such a tough topic to harness and demonstrate in words or video without ruffling someone’s feathers. And that can be why it’s so discouraging to cover race. But it needs to be done. And what’s been done so far is important in breaking the ice on race talks, and it may start up a bit of dialogue on the topic amongst people who otherwise would never have this conversation.

It is up to us to make sure this cross-cultural dialogue is maintained off-camera. If these reports have inspired any such dialogue then they have served a great purpose.