I wouldn't call it a cultural divide (despite what our media wants), I would call America more a collection of cultures and I love being exposed to multiple different cultures just outside my proverbial front door.
That said, this is a great idea and I wish this company the best. I'd love to see something similar for the Hispanic community, as well.
>I'd love to see something similar for the Hispanic community, as well.
24/7 Caso Cerrado, let's goooo
"Netflix for black people" implies that the color of someone's skin determines so much about their personality that they need their own separate streaming service to watch shows on. I don't see how this is any improvement over the existing streaming services that already include a ton of indie content from a lot of different cultures.
They explictly say that they're trying to break out of homogenous black programming. Obviously being black doesn't correlate to a consistent personality, but it does in many ways lead to a shared experience that someone who is not black has not had.
I can certainly see where saying "for black people" doesn't sit well with a lot of people. However, that's exactly who we're targeting with the content. That doesn't mean it has to be exclusive. Most of the lyrics in rap songs are generally by black people and intended for black audiences, but it doesn't mean other people don't love it, can't appreciate it, or shouldn't listen. It just means the artist wanted to reach a certain demographic, a demo that was also likely wanting to hear an artist that spoke to how they see and live in the world.
> Most of the lyrics in rap songs are generally by black people and intended for black audiences, but it doesn't mean other people don't love it, can't appreciate it, or shouldn't listen.
We tried "rap music for white people" and we decided we preferred the rap music for black people :D
I feel like the cultural divide may be encouraged by certain groups. There's money to be made in market differentiation.
Seconding this.
And imagine the outrage if someone had made “X for white people”. There’d be riots in streets.
The bizarreness and racist double standard behind this is just astounding seen from the outside.
with precious few exceptions, pretty much every media outlet in the USA is already "X for white people." it's not necessary to phrase it that way, everybody already knows.
personally, i think it's great that the founders have chosen to sell this as "X for black people." it is much more honest and cuts right to the point. if they had not, if they had instead chosen words like "diversity," then inevitable drill-downs would be criticizing them for trying to hide their true intentions.
> imagine the outrage if someone had made “X for white people”. There’d be riots in streets.
The difference between majority and minority is surely not that difficult to comprehend from outside the US?
Completely agree, especially since it would be pretty easy to reword things to focus on the diversity of the content as opposed to the intended audience, thereby removing the divisiveness inherent in the title.
This was my first thought as well, an I'm American. Word to OP, this is a catchy title but I would be really careful going out of the gate with that kind of slogan.
> This was my first thought as well, an I'm American.
However, X for white people is often the default case and is left unsaid. As an American you should be well versed in this. No one is saying that non-black people cannot watch the content, the implication is that the content it is tailored for black people.
I'm just being honest right now, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, but this is brilliant right now in this moment.
These are entrepreneurs. Their job is not to teach everyone melting pot kumbayah culture. Their job is to make money for themselves and their investors. After about 35 years of travel and living I'm intimately familiar with Africa and Asia. There are changes in Africa right now. Changes that feel much different than any changes I've lived through previously, and this product strikes a brilliantly resonant chord with those changes. People, particularly the 18-35 demographic in Africa, will eat this up. They get some black american and african celebrities along with someone like Wode Maya on this thing, and having blackoak would become a status symbol in Africa. At least among the young.
Sure, not great for global society, but awesome for business. Only people who don't realize how quickly Africa is growing would think otherwise.
It's more understandable when you think about the Irish Troubles. The Black-White issue is really an interethnic conflict.
"for Black stories" would be a positive way to phrase this.
BET wasn’t offensive me. Telemundo wasn’t offensive to me. Nickelodeon wasn’t offensive to me. Food Network wasn’t offensive to me.
Serving targeted programming to an identifiable minority audience seems like a perfectly reasonable business (and social) proposition.
I don’t know that “Netflix for Black People” will test well, but it seems perfectly fine to me. [white middle-aged male if context matters].
Edit to add: It seems like Fubu* is another extraordinarily successful story that used a similar Black solidarity message and targeting to positive effect.
* "For Us, By Us"
I don't know what country you're from but if you don't think there are subcultures in your country under-represented by the dominant media I'd assert you're almost definitely wrong. Perhaps it feels a little strange from the outside that such a subculture is definitively "black" but yeah, that's basically how things are in the US. The country has a deep history of racism and black people being literal slaves, in that context it isn't surprising that a distinct culture developed.
But I don't think the divide is anywhere near as insane as you're imagining. People don't just belong to one culture and ignore any external infulence. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc. people all watch the NBA, NFL, watch Marvel superhero movies, so on and so forth. It's just that everyone also has additional niches.
I used to believe that media representation didn't matter. After all, fictional characters are fiction, why should I expect them to look like me?
Then someone pointed out to me that my favourite super-hero was Spider-Man because Peter Parker is a 20-something loser, just like me.
Miles Morales is one of the most successful new Marvel characters too.
But there's something authentic about Miles when other characters feel like pandering.
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Nick Fury Junior is technically a newer character. (The original Nick Fury Senior is white). They just handwaved the difference by sticking a junior in the name without elaboration though.
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Black Panther from the 70s is definitely pandering lol. But the writers were good at it. (Blatant pandering isn't necessarily a bad thing in the right context)
Yeah people used to say video games and violence on TV had no effect on people -that is was just made up worlds and allowed people to role play, etc… now they are admitting there is influence and it does affect people…
It really is! I'm Asian and have bounced between a few communities over the years. The largest group can act as if the others aren't significant enough to bother with. The other groups constantly have to defend their differences from constant influence and comparison with the majority.
Thank the media. We weren't obsessed with race until recently. Also shoot every journalist.
Yes the country has lost its mind. They’re reconstituting segregation in the U.S. at the moment
Just wait till you find out there's a National Anthem for Black People.
Having dedicated cultural venues or channels for a subculture isn't the same thing as like segregated bathrooms. It's more about appealing to a niche audience that isn't lucrative enough for a mass market purveyor. It's not really different from genre channels like sci-fi only or comedy only except that it's geared to an ethnic demographic who want more representation in their media. When a giant company like Netflix is allocating budget for new content, they will get the most returns by appealing to the largest of broadest groups.
I suspect you are from a fairly small homogeneous country. It hard to understand the racial dynamics of a very large diverse country if you haven't lived there.
If you are generally curious about why this is something that is required, I suggest "Trigger Warning with Killer Mike" on Netflix. Specifically the first episode which deals with Mike trying to get to a concert only using black products and services.
Long story short: The average lifespan of the dollar is approximately 28 days in Asian communities, 19 days in Jewish communities, 17 days in white communities — and just six hours in Black communities. Meaning after that time, that dollar has to go into another community for a product or service.
Exactly this. This racial segregation fetish mostly fuelled by leftwing Americans is insane.
I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here.
We in the US have a long history of subjugating and violently suppressing the rights of black slaves (and every black person after outlawing slavery). The last few years have shown that the number of people who still believe that should happen is much larger than we suspected.
It's not a fetish - it's a straight up fight to end discrimination against a group of people.
If it wasn't for the rightwingers (American and otherwise) who want blacks to sit in the corner and shut up, or get attacked and discriminated on, there wouldn't be a problem.
How is explicit discrimination and racial segregation ”a fight to end discrimination”?
All this ”we have long history is america black slavery blaablablah” is not any kind of a counter argument. By segregating people you are doing exactly the same thing what slave owners, south africans and those hillbilly right wing extremists do.
It looks to me like simple economics - there's a niche market with unmet demand.
It's not a "cultural divide", it's a "representation divide", and it goes way beyond ethnicity and it's also way beyond the US.
Many institutions in the Western sphere either don't match the demographic/ethnic composition of the target market any more or never have. Parliaments, cabinets, newsdesks, movies, highest level management in big companies, even access to voting - all of this has been dominated by white, straight and often old men, with women, non-White people and LGBT not being represented at all.
Over time, many of the discriminatory policies fell - but the reality was, until maybe a decade ago, representation still lacked - and now, change is coming in ever faster and faster. You now have female-centered superhero movies, Black superhero movies, transgender people in parliaments, a Black US President... and the speed of that change was for many conservatives simply too high, so they framed the quest for equal representation across all parts of society as a "culture war" instead.
The US must be sooooo ripped apart by now.
No, it's just mostly triggered white people concern trolling as usual.
Personally I’ve never, ever encountered someone who isn’t in the privileged class having these concerns lol.
Saddening that the top comment is a banner rally for questions that are posed naively whose direct answer can easily be gotten at by asking an actual Black person in real life instead of a niche space like this one. But that's not the point.
You should see the diversity threads on this board. It's the same dog whistling every time, but here its about some made-up 'we're reverting back to segregation' argument but no one had a problem with Minari winning awards about the Korean-American experience. It's the same idea, simply expanded to an entire platform of such content.
That is the impression you get if you only experience life through media.
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Agreed.
Where I work (US-company, but I work outside of US) it is similarly weird to me.
We appear to have gone backwards in the past 5-10 years in my view - no longer can you just be "you", but now it feels like we have to be labelled, categorised, and segregated into different groups. We now have to make a big deal and a big song-and-dance to highlight our differences and define what our ethnic backgrounds are (apparently to "celebrate" it or whatever), despite there being various laws (at least in the UK) about this sort of thing being a protected characteristic that you simply cannot talk about during interviews - its weird.
What if I don't fit into some neat pigeon hole on some spreadsheet? What if I don't want to explain in detail my family tree and pointing out which ethnicity my ancestors were? This idea that people are 100% Ethnic-Category-A/Ethnic-Category-B/Ethnic-Category-C and fit neatly in those slots without any kind of overlap seems willfully ignorant at best, and subversive at worst.
You are describing Identity Politics. The harshest critics call it Neo-Marxism, because it ought to be well-meaning but might ultimatively be disastrous.
I'm typical French and my daughters' mother is African... I had to explain to my daughters the whole concept of race categories and I struggled because it seemed ridiculous and aberrant to them - it is alien to their multicultural daily life. They would laugh at having to chose between being black or white. I don't understand how Americans tolerate being categorized this way. My category: "Other" - always.
You get to understand when you see the divide of prosperity, government support, unequal laws, school access, etc in numbers.
Man, this is always such a spicy comment to make. Americans always get mad but its true. As a Venezuelan I always find the racism stuff coming from the US completely baffling.
I think most of the world is just completely weirded out by how US culture tackles this issue.
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it's pretty bad. Not just on race. Youngest vs Young vs middle age vs old. leftist vs liberal vs conservative vs rightwing. LGBT vs non-LGBT. Working-class vs white collar class. nortnern states vs southern states. California vs flyover states. hipsters vs squares. punks vs. preps.
It's really tiresome.
Really? Hipsters vs Squares is an equivocal history to that of LGBTQ+/Straight socio-political dynamics, or dare I say, the history of racial dynamics? Did you consult any queer folk on that one? Did you ask any Black folk about that?
Yes, Black Americans have their own culture from music to literature to TV shows like Good Times and the Jeffersons. This is not seen as a bad thing here, it has produced many great things.
I agree. This encourages segregation, which if i remember correctly was a pretty big issue in America. Who would have thought that a movement to treat people more equally has offspring ideas which cause more segregation. What a joke. This is just a greedy attempt to capitalize on the divide in the US and profit off it. How very American of you to put profit against society's current landscape. Carry on. However maybe, just maybe you should focus your efforts on an idea that is more integrating vs divisive.
What's next? Here are a few ideas:
The NBA channel for white people and please only white basketball players on the teams
Track and Field channel for asian people with only asian athletes on the teams
Chess for dogs channel with only dogs playing chess, poor cats they are not allowed to play chess on this channel
Landscaping for black people with only black landscapers on the shows
What i like about the porn industry is there are many sub-genres within it, so one could argue that this BlackOakTV is an attempt at a subgenre. However at a time like this in the US... You know, Edward Bernay's was right in his book Propaganda, create a suggestive environment and people will buy what ever the environment suggests and they will think it was their own idea for wanting to buy it. But who knows, maybe the equality and diversity crowd really is screaming inside for more segregation and preventing all sorts of freudian slips from surfacing.
Actually i have a better idea for the chess dogs, let's only have dalmatian dogs playing chess and keep golden retrievers from enjoying any media attention while playing chess on this channel. This will lead to great narratives in the minds of the niche consumers and dalmatian ownership will skyrocket along with chess board sales.
Anyone want to give me funding?
Good luck with it regardless. More friction in the market means someone is making money. Let it rip.
I have been living bouncing back and forth between Brazil, Israel, and Colombia for the last several years. I use Tinder and Bumble a lot, and I notice in all these countries if you look at girls Instagram profiles(not all but many many), have their countries flag emoji in their profile, or maybe "100% Colombiana", or Israeli flag with hearts, etc etc. But when I visit America the girls display the flag that their like grandparents immigrated from and seemingly nobody wants to be "American" and it seems like a redneck or low class thing to put your american emoji in your profile. I have noticed this in larger American cities, it seems nobody wants to rep their flag, and it is a great contrast to other places I have been. Just an observation from a lurker
It isn't /completely/, but many are invested in making it more divided than not.
Its simple really, the cultures in America are very diverse, which may not be the case in your country.
Indian Americans regularly consume music and foods that most other Americans don't.
Hispanic Americans mostly are bilingual with Spanish/English. There are more spanish only speaking hispanics than there are english only speaking.
America has a history of racists laws (goverment) and bylaws (corporations, institutions, universities) created directly to disenfranchise non-whites that shaped present day distribution of races in different states, neighborhoods, socioeconomic status, cultural values and more.
As recently as the 60s, blacks were expressly banned from many colleges so in order to fill the gap, HBCU (Historically Black Colleges & Universities) were created because black people had no good options.
Most media in America is created by whites and the stories are based largely on white American culture. The Indian and Chinese Americans are another group that have a very hard time finding tv shows and movies that resonate with their culture. BlackOakTV looks like an attempt to offer more content representing the real differences in black American culture written from the perspective of those who actually understand it.
> “X for black people” sounds so bizarre to me(non-American). The cultural divide between the people must be insane.
Is more or less what I thought, (with the difference that I thought "Y for Z people").
So I can't judge if it's necessary or makes sense, but from the point of the author it seems to be the case.
Which is sad as black people are not a small minority in the US and so I would expect more representation of them.
I mean Netflix (or any thing similar) should be "for everyone" featuring a diverse mix at least similar to reality (or maybe slightly more diverse (1) ).
(1): For <small> minorities in a country representation with a mix "like reality" would mean they would not get much representation as just a <small> number of content thingies would represent them. So increasing the degree of diversity above it is I think a good idea.
> “X for black people” sounds so bizarre to me(non-American).
“Black” in America is, confusingly to lots of people, the name of an ethnic/cultural group formed by centuries shared experience of kidnapping, deliberate eradication of prior cultural identities, deliberate ongoing disruption of the family unit, slavery (and after slavery de jure discrimination, and after that substantial ongoing public and private discrimination in fact) to which the racial group also labelled “black” was subjected in America.
So far as I can tell the whole “melting pot” experiment didn’t really work, absent powerful enough unifying vision/motivation/ideals and the cultures were immiscible. So now they’ve gone the multicultural route. I’m interested to see where this ends up for the US.
These guys don't deserve to have their launch thread turned into the Nth copy, for extremely large N, of a same-old flamewar. That's what you started here, and it was entirely predictable from your comment, which means you broke the site guidelines. Please review them and stick to the rules. This kind of thing is nasty and avoidable.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
yep, it's quite silly. many americans recognize how silly it is. it's the dualistic messaging of mutually exclusive A & B:
A. We're all equal!
B. We need something special, because we're different!