There Is Little Just Us In The Media

This will be a screed. Hold your ears.

In 1983, the Los Angeles Times asked Martha Smilgis, then the West Coast bureau chief of People magazine, what it would take to get a black performer, say, Diana Ross, on her cover. Smilgis’ reply? “If she had a legitimate news angle - say she was dying of anorexia - then she’d be a very strong cover possibility.”

According to the Times, of more than 250 entertainment covers People ran between 1978 and 1983, only six featured black performers. Three of those were erstwhile human torch Richard Pryor.

Curious to see how - or if - things had changed, I went to the library recently and dug out a year’s worth of People. The result? In 1995, People ran 36 celebrity/personality covers. Three were black. And one of those was - you guessed it - Richard Pryor.

I offer this so you will understand why I almost laughed out loud when my mailbox disgorged the new issue of People with a cover story condemning the film industry for its exclusion of African Americans. “Hollywood Blackout,” says the cover headline … “a national disgrace.”

Ahem. Not to put too fine a point on it, but People magazine accusing the film industry of exclusion is like Adolf Hitler accusing Josef Stalin of human rights violations.

It used to make me feel energized to read a mass media story on mass media racism - as if finally the strivings and stirrings of people like me were being noticed by my brethren. Now it just makes me feel tired. Now I find myself choking on the hypocrisy of it. I’ve read it too many times, I guess.

People, Time, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, ABC, NBC, CBS, MGM, Disney, Universal … some days, it’s difficult to see much difference. Given the choice between a mediocre white performer (paging Sharon Stone) or a critically acclaimed and commercially proven black one (is Angela Bassett in the house?), they’ll dive to the feet of the former every time.

Hollywood Blackout? No, it’s a media blackout where people of color are seldom celebrated except for buffoonery or dysfunction and where a few high-profile success stories obscure the racism that remains.

Do I oversimplify? Probably a little. And, for the record, I concede that media - television in particular - have made forward strides in their treatment of African Americans.

And yet … as a consumer and student of media, I still too often feel myself drowning in a sea of white, bobbing like flotsam on an ocean of faces that don’t look like mine, experiences dissimilar from mine, values that don’t resonate with mine.

It’s an isolating experience, though one that teaches me to look for and value baseline humanity. Still, what about the baseline humanity of people like me? How often does anyone go looking for that?

Not very.

The problem is that in America, for better or worse, we interpret reality through media. Fat, old, black, gay, Arab or whatever, it’s as if we don’t exist until the media say we do.

So what’s it say to me - and more important, to my children - that People doesn’t acknowledge us? If the magazine was called white People, I’d understand. If the “C” in CBS was for Caucasian, I’d understand. If Universal called itself “Semi-Universal,” I’d understand.

But the fact is, each of those companies is positioned as and pointedly considers itself a “general” media outlet. Too bad their idea of “general” generally resembles a block party in Beaver Cleaver’s neighborhood.

I guess it’s progress that none of the four black actors depicted on the current People cover is dying of anorexia. And that, in a letter from the managing editor, the magazine implicitly acknowledges its failings and promises to do better.

We’ll see. For now, from where I sit, “Hollywood Blackout” is just another case of the pot calling the kettle black.

xxxx