Reactions to: CNN Presents Black in America

Prior to tonight's airing of this documentary, every educated black person I know text messaged, called and emailed to make sure that I was aware of the showing, and that I watch and told everyone I knew to watch as well. So, I passed the word along. I was chatting with a buddy on messenger and asked, "are you watching black in America." He said, huh? What's that? So I explained and his response to me was, "well I am watching Tyler Perry's House of Payne so technically, yes I am watching black in America, lol." I did not laugh. I explained the importance of watching and he asked me what channel it was on. I said, CNN and he told me he had no idea if he even received CNN through is cable provider, DISH NETWORK. Really? Really? He changed the channel, and five minutes later, he changed back to House of Payne and told me the documentary, was "boring and depressing." We're our own worst enemies.

I just finished watching CNN Presents Black in America and am overall pretty pleased with the balance reporting by CNN and Soledad O'Brien, respectively. It's rare that I see a news piece or documentary that shows both sides of the storey and multiple facets of being black in America. We saw the dedicated single father who just couldn't make ends meat, the absentee father, promiscuity, devotion, success, violence, etc. all in the same documentary.

I feel [and I'm not sure whether or not this was the intention] the team that produced this showed a really good balance between involuntary situations and personal choices that people make which become the sum of who we are and the lives we live. For so long black people have been able to say... I'm black, slavery happened, so my life is going to be shit without regard to an individuals choices. A really, really, really good example was the woman who had 5 children by the same man. They never married and now she supports her family alone working as a massage therapist and realtor. Really? Five kids later you realised he was no good? She broke because she loved the ding ding. Not because of the man, society, etc.

I was so excited to see something on a major network in a prime time slot that didn't center around Barack Obama or feature Cornel West, Oprah, Jesse Jackson, or any other well known voices that have arguably lost their relevance... in my limited opinion. While I appreciate the aforementioned for their respective contributions, we are not holding our leadership accountable fort he misguided misinformation they've poisoned our communities with. If this was corporate America, they would have been long replaced by more socially aware figures. I liken then to a bad TV show.. we didn't cancel them early on enough so now the general public is stuck with them for a full seven years to appease their few fans . The exec's simply move them to UPN or TNT and hope everyone's happy.

More too come on all this...

Make Sure you Check out Day 2: Premieres on CNN Thursday, July 24, 9 p.m. ET

You Can also purchase, yes purchase, the series on Itunes.