BET Promotes Ignorance

Black Entertainment Television was founded by Robert Johnson in 1980. The cable network is targeted towards African American and urban youths, featuring rap and R&B music, along with urban oriented television shows and movies and African American sitcoms. Although originally intended to entertain the young African American audience, BET shows programs that glorify violence and drug use, promote the objectification of women as sex objects, and play upon stereotypical images and behaviors incorporated with Black Americans.

In November 2006, the network premiered their original television, American Gangster. The series documents the lives and legacies of the most infamous "gangsters". Blacknews.com says the series "sheds a different kind of light on the minds of America's worst offenders". It's true. American Gangster features a lot of seemingly unremorseful convicts, telling stories of their criminal activities and the cameras do close ups on the money that they got while they did it. And at the end these gray-bearded ex-cons, some still in their orange jump suits do the very cliché "stay in school...don't do drugs".

It's a good show. Original and provocative, but so obscene. Showing killers and their victims bloodied bodies lying still on red concrete. Having a show that glamorizes the life of a good for nothing criminal, who has the audacity to speak badly about the police, who protect Americans from sea to shining sea because they broke down the door of his house after he'd been running from the law for a week. It is the equivalent of making a documentary of the two boys who were responsible for the Columbine shooting and making their actions seem justified.

Most recently in the third season of the show, Kody "Monster" Scott was depicted as "the pen and the gun". The episode about Scott focused on his violent crimes, showing video of a robbery victim he stomped into a coma, being carted off on a stretcher. As all the episodes do, they show how the "gangster" reformed and mellowed in an attempt to become a part of society. Kody Scott became a best-selling author with his autobiography Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member. He wrote a book, so its okay that he put that poor guy in a coma, and those two kids you saw laying on the pavement, well that's okay because it was a really good book. That is the ridiculous message of justification they're telling the urban youth, watching. And of course, Scott in an interview wearing an orange jumpsuit tells that he regrets all the crimes he committed. Later in the episode Ving Rhames, whose narrates, tells viewers that this video interview was shot years ago and that Kody Scott is actually on the run after warrants were issued for his repeated parole violations.

A great role model. American Gangster did the network justice however. Reginald Hudlin BET President of Entertainment said that this "generation...they're not so sure whether crime pays or not." BET's "honest look at the criminal life", the life of Kody Scott, and Melvin Williams, who is said to have brought heroin to Baltimore and whose stacks of money were part of the footage showed, and all those others bragging about the money they had, the car they got, and laughing at pictures of them in ridiculously ugly, but expensive fur coats.

BET feeds urban youth stereotypes. One of them being that Black American men only have the capability to be successful if they are drug dealers, a sports star, or a rapper. And why would they think anything else? There are no cool hip urban accountants with their own show on BET. The other is that women are only good for bending over. The majority of the music videos played feature skanky looking women with little to know clothing dancing in front of a car with big wheels.

In The Effects of Hip-Hop Music Video Exposure on the Sexual Attitudes of Young Adults, the International Communication Association did a study that found sexual content in hip-hop music videos effected a group of college undergraduates in "varying degrees of sexual imagery", including sexual objectification of women and sexual permissiveness. It is not as if the network has no choice, but they purposefully show the sexually explicit music videos and completely ignore others, except for on Sunday mornings when the network shows Bobby Jones Gospel and other Christian programs.

In their lame attempt to entertain viewers with relatable content, they actually expose a large amount of under aged children to adult themes, such as violence, sex, and drugs. In 2006 the Census Bureau approximated a little over 40 million Black Americans and 31% of that population was younger than 18 years old. A large percentage of those children, don't live in inner cities, but suburban and rural areas, so they are not familiar with the uncut gang violence shown in American Gangster.

They also depict stereotypical Black families, especially in Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is. The show stars R&B sensation, Keyshia Cole, her mother a former drug addict, her older sister who has a number of children by different fathers. The theme of the show is that this is how life is and even though Cole is famous and rich her life is like most other Black women, facing an enormous amount of chaos in her family life. However, the Census Bureau found in 2006 that 46% of black families include a married couple and most families don't spend their time yelling at each other and talking about former drug addictions.

Marchae Gair in her opinion article, Black Intellect is BET's Worst Nightmare describes programming on BET as "distasteful" depiction of "sensationalize[d] living". She calls for the network to educate young Black Americans, but the network seems to refuse, becoming more and more degrading as time goes by.

Gair, Marchae. Black Intellect is BET's Worst Nightmare. http://media.www.kentnewsnet.com/media/storage/paper867/news/2007/02/22/Opinion/Black.Intellect.Is.Bets.Worst.Nightmare-2735102.shtml

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmcensus1.html

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