Rant #3,283: Black Is Black

This was a pretty uneventful weekend for me as I push on in my rehab.

I watched plenty of TV, and I saw how we honor Black History Month.

I have a kind of love-hate relationship with celebrations of this sort.

I believe to just dedicate a single month to such a celebration, and laser focusing on, a single month on such a celebration, is kind of wrong.

I also think the media makes this celebration a punitive exercise rather than an educational one.

The constant pounding over the head that we get from the media about how we as a civilization, a country and as a world held bllacks down from the full human experience is overbearing and a bit difficult to process.

And it becomes an electronic pulpit to racism itself, totally denigrating all whites for holding blacks down.

If you want to have such a celebration, I would prefer one where no one is degraded, and you actually learn something from.

Thus, I have been quite pleased about how the Buzzr classic game show network has handled Black History Month.

What they have done is that throughout the month, they are highlighting game shows that featured black luminaries of their times in various segments of these shows.

And yes, in its own very minute, grandular way, it teaches you about black history in a very provacative, interesting way.

Yes, TV was quite segregated up to the late 1960s into the early 1970s, with blacks and non-whites featured few and far between on the networks and local stations.

And if you were Jewish, forget it ... you basically had to hide what you were and blend in with the existing WASP-y environment.

Things began to change very slowly in the late 1960s, and into the mid-1970s, you began to see more black abd minority representation on American TV, fueled by the success that Norman Lear had with shows where blacks were prominent characters.

But game shows were sort of slow to join the parade, and black representation was few and far between really into the late 1970s and into the 1980s.

For every Nipsey Russell appearance on "To Tell the Truth," there were a multitude of missed opportunities for blacks to make their presence felt on game shows.

But that doesn't mean that blacks weren't featured from time to time on these shows. 

And that is what Buzzr is highlighting this month--game show episodes which did feature blacks prominently in segments of these shows.

I saw one the other day that was quite interesting.

"I've Got a Secret," which was created by Allan Sherman, was an extremely popular game show in the 1960s.

The episode I saw was one that featured two segments featuring black performers.

Bookending a segment where a white scientist demonstrated a liquid he created that actually runs uphill--don't ask!--there was the first segment, where a kid's version of the Harlem Globetrotters was featured, and then the last segment, where Pesrl Bailey was featured, with comic impersonator George Kirby imitating her voice and singing style.

Steve Allen presided over all.of this, with a lily white cast of panelists-'including Betsy Palmer Bill Cullen and Henry Morgan--trying to figure out what the secrets were.

And interesting enough, the panel also featured Bess Myersom, one of the first Jewish celebrities to not hide her Jewishness.

The segments were quite interesting, although I doubt that either Bailey or Kirby would have been invited on the show as a panelist at that point in time.

This black and white episode, a kinescope of a color episide from 1967, taught me more than any hitting over the head we get today from the media during Black History Month.

And to think, it would still be.years before there was a black game show host--Adam Wade in the short-lived "Musical Chairs" in 1975.

I wish that the media would take a cue from how Buzzr is handling Black History Month and stop casting blame, teaching us while celebrating this month's honorees in a positive and educational way.