NAACP Is Picking the Wrong Fight in the Big Battle

When NAACP President Kweisi Mfume summoned the heads of the major TV networks to a daylong “fact-finding” session on Nov. 29 to tell what they are doing to promote racial diversity in their industry, only the president of CBS Television showed up. The other networks were represented, but not by their top people--and those people wound up leaving without making presentations (“Executives From 3 Networks Walk Out of Diversity Hearing,” by Greg Braxton and Dana Calvo, Nov. 30). At the end of the session, Mfume said he would decide at the end of December whether the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People should go ahead with its much-talked-about proposal to boycott one or more of the networks.

NAACP leaders should do more than delay their boycott decision; they should drop it completely.

I don’t say this lightly. I have repeatedly hurled harsh broadsides at TV executives for their blatant and disgraceful ethnic sanitizing of blacks, Asian Americans, Latinos and Native Americans from this season’s major TV shows. But there are just too many worrisome questions that NAACP officials haven’t answered, and problems and issues they haven’t dealt with, to justify asking blacks to support a boycott.

At the top of the list is the fact that TV executives have over-saturated the airwaves with a parade of goofball, sex-laced sitcoms, and action and gossipy talk shows that are deliberately designed to appeal to young, middle-class whites. Many blacks see absolutely no relevance in this programming to their needs and tastes. They regard the major networks with profound contempt and declare network TV a hopeless wasteland that is not worth their time and attention.

Even if a TV boycott succeeded, it still would benefit only a tiny handful of black TV industry professionals. Therefore, shouldn’t the battle for greater diversity be waged by black media and entertainment advocacy groups? This is the strategy employed by Latino and Asian American media advocacy groups. And if a boycott doesn’t succeed, which is far more likely, would TV executives be able to say, “See, I told you so,” and have yet another excuse to give an even colder shoulder to African Americans in the industry?

*

Then there’s the deep suspicion that despite the tough talk about targeting advertisers, NAACP officials won’t really mount a no-holds-barred attack on them. After all, many of them are the same corporations that bankroll NAACP fund-raising campaigns, dinners, banquets, scholarship funds and general programs.

The most worrisome question, however, is: Aren’t there more crucial media issues and concerns that have a bigger impact on African American communities that the NAACP should direct its time and resources toward? Here’s the checklist of some of those issues that the NAACP has either made a low priority or, worse, ignored.

* The Federal Communications Commission report in January that condemned major corporations for refusing to advertise on minority-owned radio and television stations. Little has changed since then.

* The steady wipeout of black-owned radio stations nationally. According to a study by the Black Broadcasters Alliance on minority radio ownership, the number of minority-owned radio stations nose-dived from 127 in 1997 to 100 in 1998. The majority of those sold were black-owned stations. If present trends continue, even more black-owned stations will become faint memories in the next few years. There are enough financially well-heeled black investors to purchase some of these stations. The NAACP could and should take the lead in organizing them to do that.

* The battle by black comics against Black Entertainment Television for failing to pay union-scale fees for their appearances on the channel’s comedy shows.

* The proposal by FCC Chairman William Kennard to create a slew of low-frequency radio stations. This would give community public-interest and social-activist groups media access. The proposal has been under intense fire from some of the major broadcast networks.

* The creation of more programs to provide African Americans with wider access to computers and the Internet. This is an effective means to broaden the dissemination of information and stimulate discussion of issues in black communities.

* The persistence by some filmmakers, and that includes some black filmmakers, in pumping out dated, hackneyed images of African Americans as crooks, clowns and charity cases. At the NAACP hearing, some performers made the point that the fight should not just be for more jobs for blacks and minorities but also against the sometimes blatant, but more often subtle, racially stereotyped casting of minorities still rampant in the TV industry.

These are the big-ticket media policy issues and battles that impact on and are the concern of many African Americans. NAACP officials should realize this. But even if some don’t, I do. And this is why I won’t boycott the major networks.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a writer and the host of “Tuesday Live,” airing Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on KPFK-FM (90.7). He can be reached at ehutchi344@aol.com.