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DVD Review: CNN Presents: Black in America
By Kam Williams
Just a month after its over-hyped special aired on TV, CNN is already
releasing Black in America on DVD. Hosted by Soledad O'Brien, the
disappointing series originally aired in two parts, the first entitled
"The Black Woman and Family," the second, "The Black Man."
Unfortunately, each half was less a cohesive study of its subjects than
a string of loosely-connected segments each introduced by lame raps by a
brother in a cap. Serving up everything but the kitchen sink, it opens
with the reunion of an African-American family named Rand that can trace
its roots back to a white man who in the 19th Century had seven kids
with his white wife and another six with his black mistress.
This storyline builds up to a first-time meeting of the black and white
sides of the Rands. What a so called "white patriarch" has to do with
"The Black Woman" is beyond me.
After that weird start, the slapdash investigation turns to the question
of education. Here, we're informed that half of all black kids don't
graduate from high school. What else is new? Nothing about this
supposedly landmark series struck me as particularly innovative.
My biggest overall problem had to do with the program's periodic factual
inaccuracies, such as when Soledad refers to the riot which erupted in
L.A. after the Rodney King decision as the most deadly U.S. riot in 100
years. She conveniently ignores other more bloody incidents like the
Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 when over 300 blacks were slaughtered by white
militiamen. What's up with that?
Such infuriating mistakes which I was well aware of left me wondering
how accurate CNN was when citing statistics I was unfamiliar with,
especially since so much anecdotal evidence about rap music, AIDS, skin
color, mixed-marriages etcetera sounded awfully subjective.
Unrated
Running time: 160 minutes
Studio: CNN
To see a trailer for CNN Presents: Black in America, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZcUuGwKYc0
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Lloyd Kam Williams
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 Lloyd
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity.com is committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMD.
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