BET: Is Aaron McGruder Doing More for the Black Community than BET?

Wanting to know more about BET who better than to watch Aaron McGruder, the creator of The Boondocks, talk about it.

It’s funny they showed a clip about ‘bad things’ skyrocketing after BET started airing. The funny thing is, I don’t think it’s solely BET’s fault. Look at MTV they glorify teenage pregnancy and girls are getting pregnant to get on a show. This actually aggravates me. For me, the entire point of the show is to show how horrible it is to be a teen mom, I guess not. You shouldn’t be praised or given that much money for getting knocked up! What type of message are we sending!? “Do drugs, and you’ll appear on ‘True Life: I’m on Drugs'”. I just don’t get it. BET probably has a role in the drop out rates, but it’s probably more personal reasons than the influence of television.

Aaron Gruder wants to find a black leader that “won’t embarrass you”. Al Sharpton is a  bit of a hypocrite and that just makes everyone look bad. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t many black role models. Many young black people think that becoming a basketball player or being a rap artist is the best way to make it in life. It’s hard to point out all the black writers, doctors, CEOs, politicians, etc.

Although the conversation reared away from BET, he does make a good point. America likes to do things and say they’ve made the most significant change ever. Getting rid of slavery seemed like such an amazing feat to many Americans. Not to brag, but Dominican Republic had slavery for only 200~300 years in comparison to America which had slavery for 200 years, but still treated it’s black population like second-class citizens (I would say 300 years since integration didn’t really happen till the 70’s and 80’s). America had slavery for a long time, even after it was ‘abolished” there was a defacto slavery.

Aaron McGruder also says that “everyone knows what the problem is”, but why isn’t more being done to get the problem solved? Since everything is based off of money, why not cut the supply and channels like BET and MTV won’t be able to produce it’s crappy shows anymore.

BET: Parental Point of View

The Boondocks is always throwing jabs at BET for corrupting the black community. AKA:

Actually, The Boondocks used to be on BET (ironic, right? Especially looking at how the Boondocks ridicules the types of things BET shows; ie naked women on strip poles, while a rapper with no talent raps about wanting sexual relations). BET took the Boondocks off the air after an episode was very critical of BET directly. I highly doubt BET producers ever took the time to watch the show. Makes me wonder if they pay attention to anything else being aired on their channel.

I knew from the get-go that BET was just absolute trash. After reading an article, I am absolutely stunned. The article’s audience is for parents. I think about entertainment from a parental perspective. I’m already very disappointed in the younger generations. I would like to reverse the crap they’ve been fed. We nowadays watch television for hours. Children are pretty likely to watch BET because everyone else is watching it. I thought BET was bad, but not that bad:

So relentless and constant is this kind of content that the PTC found that [BET] averaged one instance of offensive content every 38 seconds. By comparison, prime-time broadcast TV programming in the 8:00 p.m. hour (itself full of sex and violence) averaged one instance of negative content only about every five minutes.

This is ridiculous. How can such horrible $#@! be shown on TV? I’m puzzled as to how this hasn’t gotten more attention. I think the channel does more damage to the black community than a comment made by Don Imus. Don Imus won’t have much an effect, but BET has obvious and direct influence since it’s part of ‘pop culture’ (which I also dislike). I can’t complain too much because organizations are doing things to lessen BET’s influence. It makes me sick all at the same time to believe that BET is just in it for the money and not value/substance. They obviously don’t care. I think almost everything in pop culture is about money. I really wish I knew where I saw this video, but a man interviewed elementary school students in the mid 1900s about what they wanted to be when they grow up and most of the kids have decent dreams, like nurse, firefighter, truck driver, teacher. He did the same experiment in the 2000s and the most popular response was “get rich”. Is this a sign of culture deterioration? Most definitely.