In American Mainstream News, Black Male Everyday Stories And Voices Still MIA

MIA are the True Tales in brilliant journalistic 5k UHD Of our daily Struggles and Issues Of our Fears, Hopes, Dreams Of our Lives beyond the American Mainstream Or the American Drained Stream

The mainstream press “have not communicated to the majority of their audience—which is white— a sense of the degradation, misery, and hopelessness of living in the ghetto. They have not communicated to whites a feeling for the difficulties and frustrations of being a Negro in the United States. They have not shown understanding or appreciation of—and thus have not communicated— a sense of Negro culture, thought, or history.

…The world that television and newspapers offer to their black audience is almost totally white in both appearance and attitude.” —Kerner Commission Report, March 1968

The city of Chicago’s skyscrapers loom in the distance in this skyline portrait taken looking west toward the shore. A 15-minute drive from the downtown Chicago, John Fountain grew up in the city’s West Side in North Lawndale, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. moved in January 1966 with his family to call attention to the plight of Chicago’s Black poor—a community later the subject of a Chicago Tribune series it dubbed, “The American Millstone,” so-called because it said this “permanent underclass” was the millstone draped around America’s neck. (Photo: Provided)are

By John W. Fountain

Fifteen minutes away from downtown Chicago skyscrapers and tourist fair,
there is a Chicago that most of the world and most visitors to our fair city never see
Unless it is violence and carnage on the news at 10
For if it bleeds, as far as American Journalism is concerned,
It still leads
But the stories of daily life before death
Of substance and breadth
Of good Black fathers and functionality
Of good Black men who coach, teach, mentor
And raise strong families
Seldom rise to the daily platter of journalism— 
of American news…
So the view of Black men—of Black life—
Remains indelibly skewed

MIA in American journalism still
is the story of “us” as Black men
Non-monolithic in voice
Though common in gender
and in our Black skin

MIA still is the totality of the voices of us
In purest authenticity
The stories of how we Think
Feel
Move
Love
And Breathe

MIA the True Tales in brilliant journalistic 5k UHD
Of our daily Struggles and Issues
Of our Fears, Hopes, Dreams
Of our Lives beyond the American Mainstream
The true stories of those of us who dwell in the American Drained Stream
Of our Positions and Opinions
on domestic and foreign policies
On the state of the economy and politics
Stories that reflect our sameness as brothers
And yet speak to our versatility
Of our righteous indignations
Of the stories beyond our mask
“And mouth with myriad subtleties”

And yet, after all these years
It seems
Or perhaps remains crystal clear to me
That ours is a story
That American journalism
Still fails to see
And the absence of our story from her pages and broadcasts
A sin of commission 
Easily rectifiable
By a Mainstream Press that would someday 
live out its true creed
And choose to see
Me
We
as Black men
How we live, love, laugh and exist
Rather than reinforcing those lies and stereotypes
it has perpetuated now 
for centuries

Email: Author@johnwfountain.com

The King Legacy Apartments on Chicago West Side in the North Lawndale community honors where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived moved in with his family in January 1966 to call attention to the plight of Chicago’s poor Blacks. The apartments, at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave., opened in April 2011. (Photo: John W. Fountain)

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The street sign on the corner of 16^th Street and Komensky Avenue marks the block where John Fountain grew up in Chicago’s K-Town in the 1960s and 70s. More widely known as the North Lawndale community, it is the neighborhood, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. moved in with his family in January 1966 to call attention to the plight of Chicago’s poor Blacks. (Photo: John W. Fountain)