Posted on 08/11/2005 8:22:13 PM PDT by neverdem
WHEN I was growing up in the 70's, Ebony and Jet were always on the coffee table, along with the late, great Ebony Jr. for children. There always seemed to be a party going on in all three of them, which is just the way their creator John H. Johnson wanted it. He created Ebony in 1945 to show that "Negroes got married, had beauty contests, gave parties, ran successful businesses, and did all the other normal things of life."
Ebony was still at it 60 years later when Mr. Johnson died this week - its 717th issue is on the newsstands now. But while Ebony and Jet remain cherished in the black community, for a long time their upbeat tone has carried a certain whiff of another time - namely, black America before the black power era in the late 60's.
As a matter of fact, it was on this day in 1965 that the riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles marked a turning point in civil rights philosophy in black America. The old way focused on assimilation and paving the way to it by celebrating blacks who excelled in the "normal things of life" that whites did. The new way elevated separatism and supporting that argument by showing whites the plight of blacks who had it the worst.
Many saw the Watts riots and the ones that occurred nationwide in its wake over the next few years as eloquent, if chaotic, statements from blacks who had been suffering for too long. Under this mentality, black success was often treated as an inconvenient sideshow, best publicized as little as possible.
So while in the 50's the N.A.A.C.P. decried "Amos 'n' Andy" for not paying enough attention to successful blacks, in the late 60's black pundits ganged up...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
Well THAT didn't last.
As long as we have writers who casually toss out phrases such as "black America" we still have a problem.
Man, she needs a wheel balance and a front-end alignment.
[Man, she needs a wheel balance and a front-end alignment.]
What?! No jokes about needing a lube job?
I leave the unskilled work to the hired help.
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