I'm white, but I am concerned that the February schedule for
the "Decades" television channel could indicate the staff is
racist. February is supposed to be Black History month,
but you can barely tell it from the Decades program
schedule. The emphasis is on publicizing the lives of
those they call remarkable women even though women have the month of
March as their month.
Decades normally has a schedule that combines history documentaries
and entertainment programs. Each weekday has a program that
summarizes major events that occurred on that day which may include
events such as a birth or career milestone in a celebrity's
life. Weekends have marathons called "binges" of a single
series. Lately they have been running mini-binges with two
3-hour periods devoted to a single series possibly featuring a
celebrity being emphasized that day. This month they are
running series featuring predominately white women. They are
running a week of shows featuring black women, but except for
"Touched by an Angel" the shows have a white male as the
principle character.
There aren't very many female entertainers who are more remarkable
than Debbie
Allen who played a dancing teacher on "Fame"
while being the show's choreographer. She later became a
successful director. Diahann
Carroll as "Julia"
was one of the first black women to play the central character in a
sitcom. "Barefoot
in the Park", a series about a young black couple, was
the first show since "Amos and Andy" to feature a predominately
black cast. Teresa Graves
starred in "Get
Christie Love" the first series about a police woman
since the fifties' series "Police
Decoy",
I had expected they would emphasize programs featuring black
performers to observe Black History Month possibly including
episodes of Nat King Cole's program. There's no good
reason to run women's programs instead of black programs this month.
One thing that would have been great would have been to run
different series showing how the roles available to blacks changed
since the fifties. If they wanted to devote two months to
women's programs instead of one month they could have used April
instead of February. The devotion of a week to black
women indicates they believe black women matter. The
lack of a similar week for lack men implies they don't believe
black men matter.
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