Black (not gay) in America

So I haven't seen CNN's Black in America. I probably won't watch it because it'll just end up making me angry. This always happens when a mainstream group sets out to create the definitive piece on a large group of people that isn't monolithic. One of the best criticisms of the the series was on The Bilerico Project today. The writer, H. Alexander Robinson, points out that they experience presented by the series came from a largely straight perspective:

In almost every segment there was an opportunity to bring Black gay men, lesbian women, bisexuals and transgender men and women into the discussion.

Yet there was nothing, not even a suggestion that we exist.

He also starts with a great W.E.B. Du Bois quote, "How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word. And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,--peculiar even for one who has never been anything else." It's hard to include all perspectives when you set out on such a project like Black in America, but it seems that there was little thought into anything other than a very specific perspective.