In October 2005, Jam Donaldson found herself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. The charge: that Donaldson had caused a man—apparently an aspiring lothario—emotional distress by putting an unflattering, metrosexual, come-hither photo of him on her Web site, "Hot Ghetto Mess." He wanted $3,000 in damages. If all this sounds a little silly—well, perhaps we should tell you that the case was tried on "Judge Judy." She decided in Donaldson's favor. But Donaldson faces a more serious judgment this week, as "Hot Ghetto Mess" prepares to go from cult Web site to a mainstream TV show.
No one has actually seen the TV version of "HGM" yet—its network, Black Entertainment Television, wouldn't screen it for NEWSWEEK—and BET's programming president Reginald Hudlin insists that the show is not a literal translation of the Web site, which is basically an expansive gallery of gold teeth, neon wigs and oversize thong models that could easily be called "Blacks Wear the Darnedest Things." Donaldson, who is also the executive producer of the BET program, calls her concept "social commentary." But many people in the black community don't see it that way. A grass-roots Internet campaign has already persuaded Home Depot and State Farm Insurance to withdraw their advertising. Yet the controversy is only a symptom of a larger challenge looming over BET: how to depict the black community, which can be highly sensitive to negative media portrayals.
Donaldson, a former Legal Aid lawyer, hardly invented the concept of lampooning the working class. Jeff Foxworthy and Roseanne Barr, among others, have built careers on caustic portrayals of how poorer whites live. But it's telling that when Dave Chappelle joked about poor blacks on "Chappelle's Show," he became so racked with guilt over the material that he walked away from a $50 million TV deal. Why? Because when the camera is trained on African-Americans, there is still concern among blacks that whites view them as a monolith of poverty and poor taste. Pair this concern with a perceived dearth of depictions of any kind of African-American life on television and the sometimes wrong-headed, yet perfectly understandable, logic starts to form: depictions of African-Americans must be precisely calibrated to present an image that counteracts the deleterious effects of "Good Times" and "Soul Plane." This is the same logic that led Bill Cosby to micromanage his '80s sitcom down to the most hair-splitting detail: scripts that called for a soul-food dinner were changed so that the family was instead dining on lean protein and vegetables, while casting agents had to ensure that Cosby's fictional son didn't date only light-skinned women. Two decades later, the same anxieties exist.
The irony is that BET has recently made a pronounced effort to class up its offerings, including "Baldwin Hills," a reality series focused on 11 teenagers living in an affluent, mostly black Los Angeles enclave—and for contrast, one girl from the wrong side of the tracks. At the risk of belaboring the point, the voiceover during the opening credits says "Not all black people are from the ghetto." What's fascinating about the "HGM" controversy is that it's a disagreement about the means, not the end. Both sides want to present a united front against stereotypes of blacks on television. But whereas BET hopes to expose the germs to direct sunlight with "Hot Ghetto Mess," those who oppose the show want to act like the mayor who's expecting a visit from the Olympic committee: keep the riff-raff out of sight so people will forget they exist.
This unyielding obsession with image and perception can sometimes seem like paranoia, until another reminder, such as the reviews for Stephen L. Carter's novel "New England White," seems to legitimize that fear. "White" is a murder mystery about an upper-crust black family, and despite the intricate plotting of the whodunit, the book's depiction of the black bourgeoisie fascinated some critics in a manner that would be absent if the book were about wealthy whites. They describe privileged blacks with the sociological awe of a child with his first ant farm.
African-Americans need to feel confident that white America is aware that there are black haves as well as black have-nots. Then the challenge will be to pull the poor and uneducated out of the shadowy margins. The classist sideshow that is "Hot Ghetto Mess" certainly won't begin to accomplish this, but it will serve as a reminder that someone needs to figure out how to eliminate class stratification because, so far, the haves have not.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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