How did EbonyJet.com manage to tie what they describe as the suicide of a middle class family to a looping image of a cotton field while wagging a Cosbian finger at general Black laziness?
Like me, you might’ve missed it.
Truth be told, I was Ebony/Jet-free for over a decade–lang, lang, dankey years as my grandmother would say–until a friend recently sent me an article from ebonyjet.com titled, “Blessings and Options: A senseless murder and the death of hope. There were other options.”
The Jan 2009 piece from the Living/Health & Fitness section cautions:
“If all else fails, UPS is hiring.”
That’s a long-standing joke in the Black community intended for people whose lofty dreams don’t turn out according to plan…
Apparently nobody ever said this to Ervin Lupoe who… killed his wife and five beautiful, healthy, innocent children.
The author, Eric Easter, dislikes the news coverage that made the murder-suicide “about the perils of the nation’s economy and the desperation of the average working man.” He tries to set the record (and the race) straight because “Lupoe had options,” ranging from UPS & some 113 other jobs in Lupoe’s field of work. (Easter even notes that the suicide note had spelling errors, subtly taking issue with Lupoe’s grammar.)
I agree that there were other options as Ebony/Jet points out the parents could have sought counseling. Who wouldn’t agree? But that’s not the issue.
Instead of listing places that one needing mental health services can visit, EbonyJet.com ties this tragedy to another–an initial brainstorm session during the launch of EbonyJet.com:
“When we launched this website, my colleagues and I had an idea to run a looped video of a cotton field as a permanent reminder to people of how far we’ve come, even in our worst times. It may be time to revisit that idea.”
WOW! This brings to mind that controversial/censored Boondocks episode regarding the reformation of (Viacom’s) BET, no?
Nowhere does this EbonyJet.com piece discuss the fact that mental health coverage is tied to employment. This fact seems to be an awfully important point to consider in a piece geared toward the “us/we”–Black Americans–who are twice as likely to be unemployed, living in poverty, and thus more likely to be without (mental) health coverage.
How far “we” have “come,” indeed? Doesn’t it seem like just another version of that woeful media coverage of the “realization of THE DREAM” that always seems to “threaten” Black people: stop making slavery excuses now that Obama is president?
I don’t think this EbonyJet.com piece is as progressive as the author thinks it is. Matter of fact this seems like another version of late 19th century/early 20th century Booker T. version of Racial Uplift, you know: pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps or cast-down-your-bucket.
Talk about “what can Ebony, err brown, do for you”?
I guess instead of putting the looping image of the cotton field, the Lupoe family and “UPS is hiring” are supposed to help “whip us” into moral and mental shape?
What do you think?
Jive awful on so many levels…failure to recognize the significance of mental health here, that self-help bullish dressed in nationalism, using cultural cues to further stigmatize mental illness, and we could go and on. What we allow to pass as black journalism is amazing. I’m sure we are not the only ones to notice this…has there been any response to the article?
Right on Tim! I don’t know about any extensive coverage on this particular piece. Had it not been for Sonya–www.sonyadonaldson.com, this one would’ve slipped my periphery. There is so much happening here.I think you are right on about us allowing “this type of ish to pass for black journalism.” This article took a lot of cheap shots. E.g.: The mention of the looping image of the cotton fields and suicide/infanticide cheapens all sorts of advances texts like Toni Morrison’s _Beloved_ tries to make. Why did the powers-that-be feel like they could get away with printing things like this, that it’s not “political suicide” for the EbonyJet brand? In this current climate, we’ve got to start paying attention to what’s being said, who’s saying it, how is it being said, and for what reasons?
This piece was disturbing on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin. But suffice it to say, there is this lingering mode of black journalism that seeks to “make us presentable” to mainstream, even if it means that we disregard/ignore or “spin” a tragedy that is rooted in our experiences as black, disregarded, and disenfranchised people.