Last week I saw on iGoogle (probably in the TechDirt feed) that 1938 Media had inked a deal with Verizon Wireless to distribute 1938 Media content on its VCast service. I didn’t get to read it because it was a busy day. 1938 Media was no stranger to me, however, after all the controversy that his TechNi***: Where are the Black Tech Bloggers? video caused on the Videoblogging Yahoogroup a year ago. (Google it). So then Monday I see in my email from the Electronic Urban Report that Najee Ali, Paul Porter and other activists were calling for Verizon Wireless to withdraw the distribution deal. I thought that interesting that this was in the Electronic Urban Report and also since the infamous video was about a year old. I wondered if the boycott would work. Apparently it did because the next day the Electronic Urban Report was reporting that Verizon dropped 1938 Media from the VCast service.
Now folks are crying “outrage” and “conspiracy”. What you have here is the basic tenet that corporations don’t like controversy. Corporations care about one color: green. And if some controversy threatens that green they will drop the source of the controversy. It’s simple. Outside of Hollywood and the music industry, controversy doesn’t get you far in real life.
I read a lot of comments on TechCrunch saying the video wasn’t racist and that political correctness is evil. It’s easy to say when you’re not a member of the group being ridiculed. A minstrel show is a minstrel show.
I also saw many say that if a Black person had made the same video then everyone would think it’s okay. There were even comments about the “activists”. I took a little time to Google Najee Ali to find out what else he’s been into. Just last month Najee Ali and Paul Porter was apparently protesting the depiction of violence in an Ashanti video. He consistently protested R. Kelly, even outside the courthouse at his trial two months ago. Ali led a protest threatening an NBC boycott over the inclusion of Snoop Dogg in It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. As long ago as 1999, Ali protested 1999 NAACP Image Awards given to Jay-Z and Big Pun for recognizing “gangster rappers that call each other [n-words] and denigrate black women.” There is a lot more about Najee Ali and his various protests all over Google but I will stop there; I think it’s shown that Ali protests anyone who portrays Black people with this gangster/pimp image whether or not they are Black.
I would also like to point out this post that I also saw: BET, probably the single largest purveyor of negative Black images, has apparently lost some sponsors due to viewers petitioning those sponsors directly. For Black people and others negatively portrayed in the media it’s about having more realistic images. For the corporations it’s about business. Controversy is not good for business.
Back to 1938 Media, this quote from Bill Cammack says it all:
The resurgence is due to Loren stepping outside of the Echo Chamber with his Verizon deal and exposing himself to people who don’t give a damn about Social Media AT ALL, but DO CARE who companies that they patronize associate with… as well as what those people appear to stand for.
