Lifestyle > Sports & Entertainment

To the non-blacks on here...do you watch BET?

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R-Tistic:
I am just curious if a lot of people who aren't black watch BET. In High School, most of the white people seemed to think it was racist and they were like "Would you be mad if they started White Entertainment TV?" and I was like no, but I'd laugh because it would be called WET. But I have heard a few white guys since I have been in college say that they saw this n that on BET, and I had no idea that they watched it.

If you do or don't, how do you feel about it? Personally, most adults and many blacks in their 20s seem to think it is very stereotypical, and many of us are ashamed to watch some of the shows and videos they watch. We are also mad that they cancelled all the positive shows that they used to have back in the 90s and early 2000's.

ABN:
well i´m black and i don´t live in america. but i used to watch it when we had it a few years ago. didn´t really watch it too much coz most of the shows just made me ashamed to be black.

Mo Z. Dizzle:
im not black, i mainly watch to see some new music videos here and there

on a side ntoe, lol on the WET thing  :laugh:

Shallow:
I always had issues with calling it Black Entertainment Television but not because there was no WET, since NBC, ABC, and CBS were already as WET as you could get (of course given the fact that the country was 12% black I don't see why any business wouldn't cater more to the vast majority). What bothered me is the "hey look at us we're black and we have our own network" type thing that goes with calling something BET. They could have called it anything and focused on finding the best art by the best black artists and really showcase black artists (not just music) since most of Hollywood and the TV world wasn't. I think calling it BET made the people on it, and behind it look like victims struggling to acheive equality, and while that may have been true in the real world it doesn't mean it has to be presented as such. Like at the Oscars when Oprah's friend Gail King was interviewing Terrence Howard, and then Will Smith showed up, followed by Morgan Freeman, followed by Queen Latifah, and then Jada Pinket; Gail screamed out "Black people at the Oscars y'all". Despite the fact it looked staged it made it seem like the "finally" made it here, when I think they should treat it like of course we're here, we deserve to be because we're god enough. It's a subtle difference from what was shown but I feel it sends the wrong message to young blacks that may be watching Oprah. When Bill Cosby debuted his show there was very little that made it seem like it was groundbreaking with in the show. The point of the show was we are people and we do great things, not black people who don't live in the ghetto. The black part was never shoved down anyone's throat and for that reason I feel the Cosby show had such a great impact on society. It would constently have 30 million viewers every week, much higher than any show on today. Sherman Hemsley did much of the same thing with his George Jefferson character. He didn't forget about the struggles and place in society blacks had but he approached with a level of dignity and assurance that most shows, particularly on BET don't approach it with.

BET now is a joke though, regardless of the name, all it does is further stereotypes for 90% of the time, throw in a documentary on Roots every now and then, and make Martin Luther King's speech the greatest music video of all time (I didn't undertstand that either), and they think they are making progress, or at least want people to think that.


To answer the initial question, I watched it in high school since I was into rap and pretty much everyone I knew watched. I couldn't tell you what most white people though of it since I was 1 of maybe 7 or 8 white kids in my high school, and 1 of 6 or 7 white people living on me street.

Suga Foot:
I used to watch it back in like 98-2001 but then the cable company took it away  >:(

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