[lovelyivy84]

Originally posted by cleopatrajones
I really enjoyed the True Life: I'm an urban cheerleader. I like seeing Black girls take and interest in a competitive sport because it builds character and challenges them in many different ways. I watch the national cheereading competitions and have lamented the lack of color among the squads. I'm glad that MTV brought that squad to our attention. As far as the "ghetto" aspects of it...if that is how people live then that's how they live. Do we want to see White Black people on TV. I think that added a flare to the series. The only thing don't like is how the word urban is used as a code word for Black people. There was nothing urban about those girls and their town. But I really was glad to see them on the program.

You have a point (although you could have phrased it a LOT better). I think that black people have a tendency to want to only see positive upper-middle class representations of black people. It is quite understandable simply because of the VOLUME of negative, disempowering images our media floods us with on a daily basis (BET).

But we can't wipe them out. And we can't say that there is no place in media for black people who may not be as upwardly mobile, or that those images can't be positive sometimes too!

People live that way! They are real and they are part of our community too! We have to resist the urgge to want to erase them from our public face because then we do ourselves an injustice.