Out of Control: AIDS in Black America-- ABC special

[So blessed!]

[QUOTE=Munchkin03;1326212]I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one--parents should WATCH TV with their kids, even BET and MTV, to start a dialogue about self-esteem and proper behaviors."

You note a good exception with Pedro's case, but most of the stuff that I've seen on BET and MTV isn't educational-- it's addicting! And it's garbage. Now, I'm a grown woman so I can choose to watch the garbage if I want to. (let's be real, it's often entertaining.) Children are more impressionable, though, and I think we have to set limits on what they have access to.

So I disagree that a major source of dialogue about self esteem and proper behaviors should be MTV or BET, or TV in general. Why do you have to watch women running around in bikinis or shaking their stuff in the video camera to prompt a discussion about how to carry oneself like a lady? How does Cribs promote hard work and family values?

There are more positive and less-damaging guides for proper conduct. Go to a spelling bee, see a play, demand manners in public and private...

[Munchkin03]

[QUOTE=So blessed!;1326332]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one--parents should WATCH TV with their kids, even BET and MTV, to start a dialogue about self-esteem and proper behaviors."

You note a good exception with Pedro's case, but most of the stuff that I've seen on BET and MTV isn't educational-- it's addicting! And it's garbage. Now, I'm a grown woman so I can choose to watch the garbage if I want to. (let's be real, it's often entertaining.) Children are more impressionable, though, and I think we have to set limits on what they have access to.

So I disagree that a major source of dialogue about self esteem and proper behaviors should be MTV or BET, or TV in general. Why do you have to watch women running around in bikinis or shaking their stuff in the video camera to prompt a discussion about how to carry oneself like a lady? How does Cribs promote hard work and family values?

There are more positive and less-damaging guides for proper conduct. Go to a spelling bee, see a play, demand manners in public and private...

Note how I said "parents should WATCH TV with their kids." Nowhere did I say that MTV/BET should be a major source of dialogue about anything--it's one hell of a jumping-off point, however. OF COURSE I know that there are other vehicles for discussing life issues; but with the barrage of media that this generation faces, we have to at least consider that a lot of kids watch this stuff, often unsupervised. It is our role as adults to at least find out what they're watching so we can discuss how this clashes with our own value system.

There were very few channels that I was allowed to watch unsupervised until maybe middle school or so...among them Disney Channel and PBS. If there was something that we wanted to watch, my parents usually watched it with us, and if there were questions/concerns, they were brought up then. I think that if watching cable TV had been verboten in our household, I would have found other ways to see what I wanted--without the post-viewing dialogue. That to me would have been far more harmful.

[So blessed!]

This month's Essence (with Sanaa on the cover) has the 1st of a 2-part series about HIV/AIDS in the Black community. I thought it was an interesting and pretty powerful article.

[thesweetestone]

Originally Posted by So blessed!

This month's Essence (with Sanaa on the cover) has the 1st of a 2-part series about HIV/AIDS in the Black community. I thought it was an interesting and pretty powerful article.

I read this in the book store yesterday. It very was interesting. I can't wait to read part two.