Responding to a Patheos blogger’s “Ann Coulter dipped in Butterscotch? A love letter to Stacey Dash”

Editor’s note:  This post is in response to Maria Dixon, MDiv, PhD’s post titled “Butterscotch-dipped Ann Coulter?  A love letter to Stacey Dash and BET” found HERE.  Dixon is an Associate Professor of Communication at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.

Maria,

Thank you very much for your open letter, and I agree with most of what you had to say.

You wrote:

All of a sudden, artists that weren’t on MTV found a home on BET. The music AND images of Phyllis Hyman, Rachelle Farrell, Staci Lattisaw, Public Enemy, Ten City, and Angela Bofill were available. Yes, there was booty shaking, but these images were of us in the rich Technicolor of our American experience. It let us know our beauty nor our heritage were punch lines. A young Mariah Carey, a sultry Anita Baker, and MC Lyte and Salt N Pepper reminded us of the power of black women. Wynton Marsalis and George Duke were the first time that many of us learned about jazz and began to dig deeper into Monk, Holliday, and Davis.

Stacey, don’t you remember how Tavis Smiley, Ed Gordon, and Bev Smith gave us our first peek into the fact that there were black journalists and the issues that deserved to be covered that weren’t being shown on the NBC Nightly News? In its early years, BET spoke to an emerging African American middle class, who knew every day that their success was empowered by AND actively subverted by a larger American infrastructure.

Your critique of BET’s state in 2016 is on point… Under Viacom, BET is a shadow of its past values. Except Being Mary Jane, most of its original programming verges on buffoonery. But see that’s my point, at one time BET promoted African American life as seen through our eyes but now it is a channel that sees us through the racialized eyes of another.

Then you said:

Maybe sisters like you and I don’t, but we can’t speak for every sister and brother in this nation who is in the struggle and let’s be humble enough to admit that.

It was very eloquently put, but — with all due respect — why is it that only women like you and me should know that a channel that focuses on race is no longer necessary?

What makes us more special then the homegirls in the hood?

I don’t know where you come from, but I come from the streets of the South Bronx.  Everything I say or do is to educate; education is the great integrator. There is no way we can have a great United States of America while still having segregation. A segregated United States is oxymoronic. We have to make a choice.

I believe the America that you are speaking of in your letter is one of the past. Tavis Smiley and other special interest media channels were started a decade ago.

Why not educate our brothers and sisters who may not understand what we do, so they don’t get caught up in the vacuum of the mired past?

It’s time to move forward. And the only way forward is AWAY from bitterness, AWAY from separation, AWAY from hatred and TOWARD making this nation actually — finally — “united.”

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