Its February! Happy Black History Month !

[MissAnne]

Well I didn't know this but, today is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. GLAAD posted this:

 

[MissAnne]

Did you know ?

Tice Davids, a runaway slave from Kentucky, was the inspiration for the first usage of the term "Underground Railroad." Davids' owner assumed the slave had drowned when he attempted his swim across the Ohio River. He told the local paper that if Davids had escaped, he must have traveled on "an underground railroad." Davids, however, did live, giving the Underground Railroad its now-famous name.

 

[MissAnne]

Today in Black History:


February 8, 1894

Congress repeals the Enforcement Act which makes it easier for some states to disenfranchise African American voters.

February 8, 1986

Oprah Winfrey becomes the first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated talk show.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I feel kinda stupid not knowing that Oprah was the very first to have a talkshow.

 

[MissAnne]

I feel kinda stupid not knowing that Oprah was the very first to have a talkshow.

I didn't know that either.

 

[chrisrobin]

.
This would be a good time to remember the Massachusetts 54th Regiment:

http://www.nps.gov/boaf/historyculture/shaw.htm

Final scenes from the movie Glory, depicting African-Americans' of the 54th and their bravery in battle.

 

[bankside]

I feel kinda stupid not knowing that Oprah was the very first to have a talkshow.

I didn't know that either.

Don't feel bad - she must have been pretty close to the second person to ever have a talk show… It was pretty much nothing but Phil Donahue until she came along, and then the floodgates opened. It used to be almost a news program in her early days. Kind of like Oprah does Piers Morgan, but with a studio audience who got to ask questions.


edit - oh - there was Alan Thicke before her too.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Britain had TV talk shows in the 1960s

 

[BronzeBoyturnedBronzeMan]

damm i mite not be alive if it wasnt for mlk mr.x and all of the various people who supported the civil rights movement. now on to solving chicagos genoicde and the other various things happening in todays world. i sure mlk wouldnt want black to killen blacks like they are now, instead unite.But people do and see things for various reasons.. more peace and love. im thankfull

 

[bankside]

You must mean daytime talk shows, as the Tonight Show is definitely a talk show and it goes back decades before with a range of hosts before.

That's kinda like counting soaps as dramas and ignoring primetime TV.

Ahh, I would call Carson "comedy with interviews…" anyway don't want to go on too much of a tangent:

Evolution of Black Barbie...



Black Barbie 1980

Two things about that historic day:
1) Yaaaaay! Now little black girls could have a role model to promote unhealthy and unrealistic body image just like little white girls!
2) The thing I notice most is the photo on the packaging. Anyone else think it was odd for Mattel to enforce segregated dating policies? Why couldn't Black Barbie go out with White Ken, or vice versa? I mean maybe hoping for White Ken to be going out with Black Ken was a step more than the 80's could handle, but I was alive then, and I remember walking past toys like that and sit-coms like that coming up from the states and wondering why they wanted everyone to match. It stood out as bizarre and fake, even before I was 10 years old.

 

[MissAnne]

I had to laugh at this:

Black Barbie: She's Black, She's Beautiful, She's Dynamite

 

[xbuzzerx]

But that isn't a category. Television historians call them talk shows. See "Pioneers of Television" as just one example. Watched it this week.

And it wasn't Carson. His predecessors were certainly interviewing folks long before he was hired.

All that said, kudos to Ms. Winfrey. She owns it, pardon the pun.

And, what do you mean "don't want to go on too much of a tangent"? This is Hot Topics. We should be talking about cake already.

When I said "I didn't know she was first" I meant "first black person to have a nationally syndicated talkshow", rather than "first talkshow" or whatever.

 

[Cameron Haze]

those BYU students should be ashamed, this is why the world thinks that America is retarded...

 

[Blk_Thickness]

Happy Black History Month, even though I do nothing to celebrate it, lol

 

[chrisrobin]

those BYU students should be ashamed, this is why the world thinks that America is retarded...

............
those BYU students should be ashamed, this is why [STRIKE]the world thinks that[/STRIKE] America is retarded...

 

[bankside]

From what I've seen/read online on black sites/forums/blogs, African American women dating white men is still somewhat of a touchy subject in the AA community even though more AA women are open to the idea, now. A lot of it stems from how black women were sexually abused throughout American history by white men, so it's sort of still frowned upon by many. So, imagine how it would be 33 years ago debuting Black Barbie and pairing her up with White Ken. And I'm sure it would have been pretty taboo for the white mainstream as well. Especially for something target towards children. 0_o

Depends what your experience is. 33 years ago in western canada, there weren't that many non-white people. So if you saw a non-white person in a relationship, they were probably dating a white person... because who else was there to date? If I think back, any non-white person my parents knew was dating or married to a white person. The only "homogenous" couples we knew were white, just based on statistics, until we moved down the street from a family that had immigrated from the Philippines where the marriage occurred unsurprisingly between two filipino adults.

In my grandparent's generation (born in the 1910's to 1930's) anglicans married anglicans, french catholics married french catholics, jews married jews, german lutherans married german lutherans, and ukrainian orthodox married ukrainian orthodox. That covered pretty much the entire spectrum of ethnocultural diversity on the prairies, apart from the aboriginal cultures being ripped apart by the anglican and catholic churches.

In my parents' and aunts & uncles' generation (postwar to 1959 or 60), they just didn't respect those boundaries any more, and immigration threw open the door for all kinds of new combinations from around the world. Or at least, one or two new combinations, since it took a while for immigration to change the face of the prairies. For the 70's kid, this seemed obvious and inevitable. We all watched apartheid in south africa with contempt…and with smug superiority to be frank…look at that inept and cruelly racist afrikaner government! To recreate apartheid in one's personal relationships would never be legitimate. That was the "white mainstream" view, at least for the youngest two generations (mine/parents).

In American pop culture, I suppose the issue got raised on the Jeffersons by Tom and Helen Willis….but even as a kid it was "obvious" through the portrayal of George's mockable bigotry toward them that interracial couples should be considered the socially approved norm. It seemed as though the show was crafting a message to help people who were maybe a little slow in the head to get over the idea that couples should be colour-coordinated.

Anyway to a prairie boy, the idea that people would have to separate into ethnic communities, or separate into ethnic churches, or ethnic couples, seemed very strange. For two reasons: first, where would you find all the black/brown/russian or portuguese people?(I had no idea how far advanced immigration was in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver) but, second, vaguely suspicious (why are these particular black/brown/russian/portuguese people trying to avoid joining in the rest of the general community when every immigrant I've ever known has lived on the same streets, dated the same people, integrated into the same community events just like the rest of us?)

Even the idea of ethnocultural community identity seemed somewhere between outdated, divisiveness, or a sad concession to the bigotry of the oldest dying generation. If it was to be expressed at all, it was through two weeks of Folklorama. Joan will bring the Jamaican patties, Frank's father is bugging him to practice for the Dragon Dance but he really wants to do hockey summer camp... Sylvia's brother will do the Ukranian Dancing no problem. The Orthodox Church hall got flooded, so they're sharing space with the Italians - Tzatziki trattoria! I'll bring Grandma's scone recipe but she's going to have to make the haggis herself cause…just, no. We all have a culture for exactly two weeks every summer. And then we go back to being Canadians.

30 years later, there is more complexity to it than that, and probably there was then, especially in places with more history. The entire history of Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton (hell, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan) occurred within the lifetime of a woman who held me when I was born. But from that perspective, then and now, it still looks baffling that people would restrict their dating based on how dead people treated other dead people. Or that Mattel would endorse it.

 

[xbuzzerx]

^Bankside, it totally makes sense what you're saying about how in the past in many parts of Canada, minorities would be intermarried with whites simply because there weren't large nonwhite communities around. In the U.S. and I'm not sure how "globally" this is studied, but I do know that intermarriage rate in the U.S. is heavily overlapped with assimilation. One of the groups with the highest intermarriage rates, for instance, are older northeast Asian immigrant groups-- Japanese, etc. It tends to be lowest with newest, non integrated groups-- you'll definitely find a lot more Japanese Americans married to whites than Cambodians or Thai, for example. Intermarriage rate has become one of the factors by which they gauge how well integrated a group is in the U.S.

 

[MisterMajestic]

February 8, 1986

Oprah Winfrey becomes the first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated talk show.

I didn't know that either...

Oprah was not the First Black woman to host a syndicated talk show...Della Reese was...Oprah saluted Della @ The Legends ball years ago and acknowledged the fact...

Della was also the FIRST Black woman to guest host Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show"....

Happy Black History Month, even though I do nothing to celebrate it, lol

Acknowledging it is just as good...

 

[xbuzzerx]

Shouldn't need introduction.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I have always admired Josephine Baker, a singer who acted as a spy for the Allies in WWII.

This scene of what she said while performing for troops is amazing.