Although I worked at a so-called “white” radio station, I produced shows dealing with the depth of the African experience in America, repeated prison interviews with members of the MOVE Organization, a group largely ignored by the so-called Black media in Philadelphia since their Aug. 8, 1978, imprisonment, concise, sensitive coverage of their murder trial, many pieces on the housing problems of both Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey, City Council, the Republic of New Afrika, the Yoruba community in the city, the visit of Rastafarian Bob Marley, Nigerian ex-President Nnamdi Azikiwe and countless others – Hugh Masakela, the Pointers etc. What is this image nonsense?
Because a man’s hair grows long, does that hamper his ability to write, report, broadcast, THINK? Why are so-called “dreadlocks” so objectionable at a so-called “BLACK” radio station when it was a non-issue at a white one? Was it objectionable when, for almost 10 years, Georgie Woods wore a conk, a process? Was it objectionable when jocks at ‘DAS began to sport the new fad, California Curls, another process? What about a jock who gets a hair transplant, goes under a surgical knife to “regrow” hair? Any objection to the projection of those images? I didn’t think so. When a Black man stops combing his OWN hair, which grows out of his OWN head, in the form of his fathers, and PROJECTS HIS OWN IMAGE, one as African as the African seed that produced him, ANOTHER “BLACK” MAN OBJECTS! (You know, that’s some crazy shit when you think about it, ain’t it?)
Long have Blacks in Philadelphia waited for a Black-owned and Black-operated radio station. Is that it? Is this the future that Blacks long awaited, dreamed of and prayed for? Blacks are in positions of so-called “power,” but in what conditions are their minds, Cody? Are they still “whiter than snow”? Is this the new day that Blacks in the broadcasting business longed for? What a sad, pitiable day. What pettiness! What niggerism!