Answer May Be to Switch Off the Color

People of color—as we call those who are not white—have had an uncomfortable and sometimes adversarial relationship with the American media since the first days of the republic, when newspapers were the medium (no plural).
In British colonial times, during the occupations of India and parts of Africa, “people of color,”a term invented by the colonizers, meant Indians and black Africans. The secondary immigration waves coming to America included people from southern Europe and the Middle East. They were not considered “white people” when they arrived. Today, Jews (but not Arabs) and southern Europeans are “white” while the category “people of color” has broadened to include Asians and Western Hemisphere Indians.
The power to define who we are/are not—including color—has rested among the powerful, which now includes those who own broadcasting entities and who spread information to the highest number in the population.
In the newly created United States, broadcast was limited to the eastern states. The Atlas of Early American History (Princeton University Press, 1976) calculates that an event occurring in Boston in the 1790s took 15 days to be published in the Philadelphia newspapers. From Charleston, South Carolina the time lag was 22 days. Information flow skewed to the east coast, to the cities, and to those who could read. The rest of the population—most women, slaves, the indentured, and American Indians—were shut out except for what they could get from secondhand reports.
There were, to be sure, alternative sources for the unprivileged, but these were mostly circuit riders, travelers and the mail, with one exception: The powerful Six Nations Confederacy of the Iroquois had been sending runners over well established trails for centuries. Their job was to carry the information that kept the far-flung confederacy together, and they could reach destinations in very short periods of time by means of an elaborate relay system. Before, during, and after the Revolutionary War, Iroquois couriers were vital to the confederacy’s war intelligence. Had this system been converted to a general information “network,” who knows what unique social transition might have taken place?
But the emerging eastern presses were either unaware of this alternative and were so bent on creating the most purchased source of information that they could only move in one direction—proliferation of reporting and development of a rapid distribution system.
Now, in the 1990s, continuously broadcasting networks spread televised information virtually instantaneously to a global audience which can view it with no reading skills. To have access, however, the audience must be close to a broadcast outlet and a receiver. In the 1790s, reading was for the privileged. Today, access to information depends more on infrastructure, (formidable political barriers in some cases) and the funds with which to buy a television set.
But before information gets to the viewer, it must be collected and processed. And it must be paid for. Neither the readers of newspapers nor viewers of broadcasting are prepared to pay the full cost of gathering and delivering information. For that, producers go to third parties who have an interest in influencing those who get the information. It is this economic fact that has for over 200 years attracted more buyers into the “power to define” equation.
Broadcast reporter and analyst Jeff Greenfield says broadcast news is undergoing extremely rapid change. Greenfield notes that the 1960s introduced the first U.S. Presidential debates on television (1960). From 1961 to 1965, some television stations refused to run network stories on civil rights. Television broadcast the assassination of President Kennedy, the escalation of the Vietnam War, the massive tumult in American life, and covered the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. By 1969, the networks were being attacked by conservatives as ideologically biased, hostile to American values, neutral in the freedom-versus-Communism struggle, and indifferent to traditional values.
As bystanders in the liberal-versus-traditional values debate, people of color and women may have done well as they increased their on-screen numbers and made modest gains in the ownership class, but they certainly were trivialized in portrayals as the 1980s and 1990s arrived. When we look at the current commercial and cable fare of comedy, action, drama, talk shows and news, the shallowness of the content is extraordinary, especially compared to earlier decades. Color and gender are only incidental to the wretched lack of brilliance coming into America’s homes. Viewers are far more likely to see diversity and depth on the “live” cop shows, historical documentaries, and America’s Funniest Videos.
Some critics point out in a hopeful sort of way that the public airwaves are a part of the public trust. And indeed, there is a major difference between newspapers as protectors of free expression and electronic broadcasting. This difference is succinctly defined by the District of Columbia District Court in United Church of Christ v. FCC (1966): “A broadcaster seeks and is granted the free and exclusive use of a limited and valuable part of the public domain; when he accepts that franchise it is burdened by enforceable public obligations. A newspaper can be operated at the whim or caprice of its owners; a broadcast station cannot.”
Sure enough, the Federal Communications Act of 1934 treats the public trust generously. It grants licenses to broadcast operators provided that “the public convenience, interest, or necessity will be served thereby,” and it allows the operator to renew the license as long as the “public interest” continues to be served. But as with all good intentions, what defines the “public interest” has since 1934 been the subject of bitter debates and extensive case-law record.
If people of color care to be part of the power to define identity in America, there will have to be a diminution in the power of broadcast networks and newspapers—monopolies seldom change of their own accord. Second, people of color must gain greater access to the capital flows and ownership of the media. Third, those so labeled must resolve self-definition by color—the very core of separateness. There may be more limitations than gains from holding onto that concept.
Fortunately, the first two of the changes are underway. The third will be the sticker.