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How BET has failed the African American Community
The role of the media is to inform, educate and entertain its viewers; however Black Television Network (BET) only does the entertaining, and the wrong kind of entertaining. It mainly broadcasts hip-hop music videos that have vulgar language, are sexist, feature drug use and scantily dressed women, it is type of programming that makes me agree with critics that BET perpetuates negative images of black people, anti- intellectualism and has greatly failed the black community.
Rap music has never been more popular or profitable than it is today; this is mostly because of aggressive promotion by television stations like BET which is “available in more than 60 million of the 75 million homes that have cable television,” (Hubbard, 1) these videos are strewn with half naked women dancing raunchily, the rappers are mostly smoking marijuana and they have flashy cars and jewelry. These are the images that are broadcast to African American youth and these rappers are their role models seeing as most African American families are single mother families and these young men do not have a father figure or role model. BET has a responsibility towards these young people and it is failing them.
In 2007 BET premiered a series called ‘Hot Ghetto Mess’ which mainly featured black people “in outrageous, often degrading situations and clothing.”(Braxton, 1) it is such programs that perpetuate racist stereotypes that black people are violent and vulgar. The impact on the African American youth is that these images show them that that is how black people should behave and actually makes them violent as young people idolize the stars in these programs and act like them.
Hubbard talks about how the shows on BET portray images of black people, mostly rappers living fabulous lives in big mansions and driving big cars, this tells the young people that a flashy lifestyle is the epitome of...