Todd Boyd: Farewell, Ebony. You Earned Your Retirement
[Todd Boyd is the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture and Professor of Critical Studies in the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. His blog is “Notorious Ph.D.”]
When word spread recently that the venerable magazines Ebony and Jet were up for sale, a palpable sense of depression could be felt throughout some segments of black America.
This sense of depression would generally reside among those born before 1960, or at least those whose sympathies lie with the pre-‘60 crowd. For a certain generation of African Americans, Ebony and Jet were as integral to blackness as Murray’s “Superior Hair Dressing Pomade,” a “Deuce and a Quarter” and funeral home hand-fans featuring the holy triumvirate of MLK, JFK and RFK. And now, once again, like Motown and BET before it, a black media empire is being put on the auction block. Considering that Ebony and Jet were in existence before Motown and well before BET, the depression is perhaps that much stronger this time around.
The depressed among us worry that the potential sale of another black media property to perhaps a large non-black corporate media conglomerate signals the continued erosion of black capitalism in the post-civil rights era. These economic black nationalists bemoan the loss of something they consider their own. While such feelings speak to a certain sense of racial pride, those who hold such ideas personify the definition of Old School in the worst possible way. The fact is, Ebony and Jet have not been relevant for a long time, and neither have their supporters.
For those with a contemporary mind-set who have grown up either mocking the datedness of Ebony and Jet or not even being particularly aware of them, the potential sale carries much less significance. If anything, some might have even breathed an it’s-about-time sigh of relief. I know I did.
Yet for those who grew up in an era either stuck in segregation or its immediate aftermath, Ebony and Jet were much-needed national publications that confirmed the humanity of black existence when other mainstream publications ignored it. Like black banks , black insurance companies and black colleges, Ebony and Jet served a vital purpose in an era quite unlike the present, spreading all the relevant black news that other publications deemed unfit to print...
Read entire article at The Root
When word spread recently that the venerable magazines Ebony and Jet were up for sale, a palpable sense of depression could be felt throughout some segments of black America.
This sense of depression would generally reside among those born before 1960, or at least those whose sympathies lie with the pre-‘60 crowd. For a certain generation of African Americans, Ebony and Jet were as integral to blackness as Murray’s “Superior Hair Dressing Pomade,” a “Deuce and a Quarter” and funeral home hand-fans featuring the holy triumvirate of MLK, JFK and RFK. And now, once again, like Motown and BET before it, a black media empire is being put on the auction block. Considering that Ebony and Jet were in existence before Motown and well before BET, the depression is perhaps that much stronger this time around.
The depressed among us worry that the potential sale of another black media property to perhaps a large non-black corporate media conglomerate signals the continued erosion of black capitalism in the post-civil rights era. These economic black nationalists bemoan the loss of something they consider their own. While such feelings speak to a certain sense of racial pride, those who hold such ideas personify the definition of Old School in the worst possible way. The fact is, Ebony and Jet have not been relevant for a long time, and neither have their supporters.
For those with a contemporary mind-set who have grown up either mocking the datedness of Ebony and Jet or not even being particularly aware of them, the potential sale carries much less significance. If anything, some might have even breathed an it’s-about-time sigh of relief. I know I did.
Yet for those who grew up in an era either stuck in segregation or its immediate aftermath, Ebony and Jet were much-needed national publications that confirmed the humanity of black existence when other mainstream publications ignored it. Like black banks , black insurance companies and black colleges, Ebony and Jet served a vital purpose in an era quite unlike the present, spreading all the relevant black news that other publications deemed unfit to print...