NN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O'Brien spent more than a year tracking the stories of black men and women from all walks of life in America for the groundbreaking documentary series 'Black In America.'
This week premieres 'Black in America: The Black Woman & Family' (Wednesday, July 23 at 9 p.m. and 12 a.m.) and 'Black in America: The Black Man' (Thursday, July 24 at 9 p.m. and 12 a.m.)
O'Brien speaks candidly with BlackVoices.com about the series.
I know this was probably envisioned and put together some time ago, but why now?
About 18 months ago I was brought in because [CNN] had been exploring stories on Black Americans and how to do them and it became clear that it needed to be more of a documentary, it wasn't a number of 2 or 3 minute stories, you just couldn't do it justice. And then we were looking at Martin Luther King's assassination and so when people ask, why now? Well, literally it's the 40th anniversary of the assassination. And so the real answer to why now is because our three parts were: part one, King's assassination and this is the 40th anniversary year. [Parts two and three look at being black in America since that time.]
We had no idea 18 months ago when we began, we had no idea that Barack Obama would have the prominence that he has, we had no idea that so many race issues would be capturing the nation's attention.
I think that there's an interest in conversation about race in this country that has spurred people to speak more straightforward about these issues -- in good ways and some in bad ways. You know some of the dialogue and debate over Jena 6 has been people shouting at each other but there's certainly a lot of discussion about race out of Jena 6. The Sean Bell shooting, again, the same thing. That has led a lot of people to talk about race, and police brutality and justice and incarceration in ways that we never predicted two years out.
What was the most surprising, heartening, happy, sad, encouraging thing you found -- was there something or an interview that really struck an emotional chord with you?
I think what was surprising was some of the consistency of the stories that people told, two things, one was the conversation they had with their 11-year old or 12 year old sons about what happens when they got pulled over by the police. Literally no matter if you were a Hollywood millionaire or you were in dire poverty in Detroit. 'Here's how you survive if a cop pulls you over.' That was pretty shocking because you would do one interview and then you'd do another and by the fourth or fifth you realized that even if you weren't talking to people about that issue, you'd realize wow, there's this redundancy this verbatim conversation that's happening in the black community across all socioeconomic levels that white people do not have.
You [also] asked about what was encouraging....What was very interesting to me was to see the sheer number of people who could be doing so many other things.
One of the people we profiled, a surgeon Dr. Cooper, Carnell Cooper in Baltimore, he's a trauma surgeon so basically all he does is remove bullets from young black men. And after he works his 15 hour shift, he then goes and counsels these young men, sits down by their bedside and tells them, 'You know I can get you out of the game. What do you want? Your GED, a job, what do you need?' And he started a foundation in '99 called Violence Intervention Project and he helps these kids, because they're all kids, mostly 18 year old boys, 19 and 20. There are so many people who are doing things like that that really don't have to and so I find that incredibly encouraging because it's recognition that there's a huge problem and the only really way to fix it is us. The only way to fix your own community is to fix your own community. That has been very encouraging.
Those two stories have a common thread which goes across class. I haven't seen the documentary yet but I kind of assumed that a lot of things would be kind of past race and moving towards class division in the black community. It sounds like what you found was that there are still many commonalities around race.
I don't think that's true. You know some people say to me 'Are we post-racial?' And I'm like, 'No and I don't think we want to be -- I mean at least I don't want to be.' People have said to me, "Wouldn't it be great the day when no one sees color?" No, I mean why? What's wrong with seeing color? I think what people don't want is all of the negative repercussions with being colorblind. I mean I never thought seeing color was a bad thing. I always considered a back handed faux compliment was "I don't even think of you as black." That's like the worst compliment. "Oh you speak so well I don't think of you as black" I mean what does that even mean? I like the color I am and I'm proud of my color, and I'm proud of my parents' colors so I'm good with it, why are you not good with it? I don't think things need to be post-racial I think what we need is equality and a sense of understanding.
Do you think there is a disconnect between Barack Obama and black America?
I don't. I don't think so at all. I mean if you're asking my opinion I don't think so at all. I think Barack Obama is the fruition of a lot of people's work and a lot of people's dreams over the last 40 years. I mean we heard that consistently when we were doing our reporting so I think Barack Obama is part of black America and there is no disconnect. I'm sure he's disconnected from some parts of black America and I'm sure some parts of black America are disconnected from other parts of black America. But Barack Obama is as much a part of black America as me with my light skin; my dad's white and my mom's black, as my cousin who grew up in Guyana and her children are here. We're black America and it's a very wide picture that includes a lot of people. Not in our documentary necessarily where we tried to keep sort of a narrow focus but black America is a lot of things. I always hesitate when people like to try and figure who's in and who's out because it's not helpful and it's not realistic. Black America includes a lot of people.
Would you say that 'Black in America' was made for black people or for white people?
As a journalist, I never see stories that way. I would go to New Orleans all the time and people would say, "Oh this is great you're telling our story for us." I really wasn't, I was really just reporting on what I saw. So you hope if you're a good storyteller you can capture it for everybody. My goal was just to make sure that the interviews cut to the core, they got to the point that we didn't dance around things that everybody would want to talk about that. I truly never thought, "Let me ask this question because I really need white people to know this," and that's not how I approach any story, ever. I just think if you have good people and you do good interviews and you have those moments in the interview that draw everybody in because you're grabbing them by their throats and their hearts then you've succeeded. I hope everybody watches it.
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