In Black America; Is The Black Media Renaissance Real? with Ya' Ke Smith

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is in Black America. So, how do you keep a Black Media Renaissance? Well, you have to have money, right? So, for example, when I think of someone like a Tyler Perry who, you know, is now a billionaire, the way you continue that is Tyler needs to go out and start giving checks over these Blacks in the film makers, right? So, that then weak heat, because he has the money not only to fund, but he has the money to distribute. He has the money to give a platform to, and I'm just using him as an example, but there are many others. We have many big stars in Hollywood who I'm not going to name all of them, but if we really start thinking about that, that's how you open the doors that we have to make sure that we are not only making the content, but that we are controlling the way the content is disseminated. Because we are out there, there is an audience for our work.

The problem is a lot of times studios don't have enough imagination to find that audience. And if they would give us the power and the money to do it, then we will find our audience because guess what? We are the audience. We're writing for the audience. We understand the audience because we come from the same community as the audience that we're trying to reach. Yacht K. Smith, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Associate Professor of Film at the University of Texas at Austin. This bad spring, the beauty college of communication at the University of Texas at Austin held its inaugural diversity in media symposium. This annual symposium is dedicated to exploring an aspect of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and social justice across the media ecosystem. This year's virtual symposium was entitled, Is This Black Media Renaissance Real? The focus was on race in the media, specifically blackness and its reemergence in popular discourse over recent years. Surrounding the conversation regarding race, what would it sound like and feel like five to ten years from now?

I'm Johnny O'Hanston, Jr., and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Is This Black Media Renaissance Real with Professor Yacht K. Smith in Black America? Basically, what we're asking this year is, Is This Renaissance? Right now, we see blackness everywhere. We have this renaissance of black people in film and in journalism, podcasting, seeing it everywhere, and we're posing the question, not just, is the media renaissance real, the black media renaissance real, but how do we sustain it? We have seen moments in history where, again, black people were in a lot of TV shows, and then we disappeared. And then we had films, right? I think about the different movements of film. We come in for five years, and then we disappear for some reasons. And the question becomes, how do we sustain that movement? And so, that's what we will be interrogating. And we have some great speakers. We have Pamela Lukirk, who is a professor at NYU, and she wrote his great book called Diversity Eat, The Fail Promise of Billion Dollar Business, which I think is great. We have Gene Dindy, who is a podcaster, and a co-host of a podcast called Cold Switch, Able Blankson, who is the CEO of Ice President of Marketing and Communications for NAACP.

The new black renaissance is a phrase that has gained a lot of traction in recent years. Like the Harlem renaissance and the black art movement for it, African-Americans' creativity is undeniably thriving, asking no permission to exist nor validation from the largest community that will prefer African-Americans to remain other. Make no mistake about it, African-Americans are flexing their influence in pop culture, politics, the arts, business, fashion, sports, entertainment, film, and television. This past spring, the moody college of communications at the University of Texas at Austin held this inaugural diversionian media symposium. This year's virtual symposium was entitled, Is This Black Media Renaissance Real? Given the rise of a new African-American awareness, this symposium was right on. In black America spoke with Yaki Smith, a film professor in the college, and Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

I understand that you grew up in San Antonio, Texas? I did. I wasn't born there. I was born in a four-letter world Missouri, but I have only known San Antonio at home because I don't remember Missouri. And yeah, I grew up there. I went to a family from high school on the east side of San Antonio, to the University of Incarnate Word, and I'll be for moving to Austin to a 10th grade UT. And any brothers and sisters? Yeah, I have two sisters, and they don't live there anymore. One of my sisters is in the military, and she's in Georgia, the other one lives in Houston. What initially sparked that interest in film? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. So I grew up, you know, obviously watching movies. You know, my mom was a big movie buff, so we were always at the theater. And, you know, we had our DHS player, some people might not even know what that did. We were always at like blockbuster, you know, Friday night, when they had the two for 99th, it's special, and just always sort of grew up with films. And always knew I wanted to be a storyteller, but didn't think that one didn't really understand that people made movies, and also didn't understand that I would ever have access to do it, once I actually learned that people did it.

But it was at 11 years old when I saw boys in the hood that I said, you know, this is what I want to do. And it was from that moment on, and I started to really like study how films were made, study screenwriting, I would lock myself up in the library, which was next door to the apartment that we lived in, and just like study film, and really just like study filmmakers and history of film specifically really black films. And, yeah, and from that point on, I just said, you know, this is what I'm going to do, and I've been doing it ever since, you know, I made my first movie at age 15 and have been going strong ever since. So what was the name of that movie? A stolen dream, and it was interesting because what I used to do, you know, I used to watch films, and I'm watching like again, like menace society, New Jack city boys in the hood, and I used to sort of make films that were not only inspired by those movies, but honestly like real soft for those films.

So used to have like some of the same thematic elements, but always with some sort of socially conscious lens. I was always sort of very aware that film could be used as a tool for liberation, and also as a tool to really comment on issues that we have the tendency to sweep under the rug, right? I always understood that you had a captive audience when you made a film, because people were in a dark theater or they were, you know, on their couch and front of the television. And so you could sort of arrest them with the narrative that you were telling. And so I always sort of knew that that's what I wanted to do with film, and so even in those early work. Again, riffing off of those popular films, I was always sort of finding a way to interview some sort of socially conscious issue into the work. To make a film, obviously there has to be a thought process. So are you envisioning the film prior to you actually shooting it? Yeah, you know, it's interesting because this becomes a film cliche when I'm about to say, but it's so real, you know, like if you're going to write a directed movie, you have to be able to sort of take off the different hats, right?

So, for example, when I'm writing a film, I'm not necessarily thinking about the directing of it to be honest with you. I just want to write the story. So I'm thinking about, like, again, the thematic elements, I'm thinking about dialogue, I'm thinking about sort of the story structure, the sort of acts of the film, the journey of the characters, all of that. And then once I'm done with that, then I take that hat off and I put on that directing hat and that's when I started to really pre-visualize the film, right? So I'm really at that point, like looking at other movies, I'm looking at photographs, I'm just getting inspiration from paintings, getting inspiration from the world around me so that I could visualize what the thing will look like. And, you know, you're shot listing the entire movie. So by the time you step on a set, the movie should have already played in your head. I mean, I dream of these shots, I dream these films, you know, what I'm in pre-production, I'm constantly thinking about what a movie will look like or what the film will look like, where the camera will go, what lenses I'm going to use, what colors are going to be dominated. I'm thinking about everything from hair, to the colors of walls, to wardrobe, to working with the actors, like how am I going to sort of collaborate with an actor to evoke a certain kind of performance or emotion that I need out of this.

I'm thinking about all of that, so then by the time I get on set, it's not that it's easy, but at least it's pre-plan so that if anything goes wrong, I can quickly pivot, right? If you don't have good pre-production and you can't pivot, and so yeah, the thing should, you know, it should play in your head. I remember I was on the do's not too long ago. There was a couple of years ago, and I was shadowing Ernest Dickerson and he said something that I've always lived by, but just hearing somebody say it, confirm it. And he said, you know, a director makes choices, right? You don't guess, you don't like just let things happen. Yeah, things will happen and I think inspiration will bring about sort of these unplanned moments, right? But for the most part of the director makes choices, and so you know what it is that you want when you walk on set. When you're studying film, are there African-American filmmakers that are part of that study process, formally that we know if you're going to film school? I'm going to say yes and no to that. I'm going to be very honest.

Okay, yeah, that's why I asked a question. Yeah, you know, look, I think I think when you really, really want to study African-American filmmakers, you will have that class, right? Like I had a history of African-American cinema class, and I had another class that was about literature and film, and we studied like black literature, and then we studied the adaptation from literature to film. But when you're taking, you're like regular courses, you're a core courses, you'd be hard pressed to find any black filmmakers besides like Spike Lee talks about any meaningful way. Spike and John maybe, right? But for the most part, you're not, you're not learning about the Oscar Michelle's of the world. You're not learning about Gordon Parks. You're not learning about highly garema and Charles Burnett and the LA Rebellion, Julie Daesh, Casey Limon. You're not really learning about those filmmakers because they are not seen as pioneers of films. They're always, you know, ghetto wise into being black filmmakers, and yet they are black filmmakers who make films for black people from a very, very black perspective. But they also make films that are universal, and I think that's the thing that happens in film school is that for some reason, when you start to talk about black films, people forget like we human, right?

And for the same feelings that you have, that same love that you had in college and falling in and out of love and party and whatever it is that you did, we do that as well, right? They're all about fighting against white supremacy and oppression. We live lives. And so for some reason, though, people forget that. And so our films, like if you look at the 100 best films ever made, you may find two or three black films on there, and I might be, you know, giving you a high number. Yeah, right? Because again, it's going to be Spike and Charles at this point killer of sheep and do the right thing. Maybe Oscar Michelle's within our game, but other than that, you're not going to get a whole lot of black filmmakers. And so you have to really go out of your way to learn about the history of black film and to learn about these black filmmakers who in my opinion, and not in my opinion, historically the history will tell you this. Play the significant role not only in film history, but are playing a significant role now in continuing film language and continuing filmmaking.

Professor Smith, you having said that how much is lost in the educational process of these filmmakers aren't included in the curriculum? A lot is lost, right? Because when you start to think about like every, you know, right now the big buzz words are like diversity, actually inclusion, I'm sure we'll get to talk about that film. But the reason why you even need to have those words is because again, these individuals are not being taught, right? They're their contributions to film and art and I'm going to go into politics and social activism. These things are not being interrogated in any meaningful way. And so the only way that you get an interrogation of them is to say, okay, when we talk about diversity, right? Now we're going to have to start talking about these female filmmakers are these black filmmakers, right? When in fact, if you would talk about them in your core courses, when you're talking about the history of film in general, when you're talking about the contributions that that, you know, filmmakers have made to now television production, don't ghetto wise. The black people are the people of color like put them into the conversation.

And when you don't do that, I think you do a disservice to not only yourself as a professor or as a, you know, supposedly scholar, right? Because if you're a scholar, you should know all of them, but you're also doing a disservice to your students. Because now you're forcing them not only to have to go out of their way, but then you're also forcing them to have to learn about filmmakers and artists and people that you have not exposed them to. And then we start to ask ourselves this question, well, why are we having such an issue with, you know, racism or white supremacy? Well, guess what? You're teaching it in your class by excluding certain individuals from your curriculum. As you say that, Professor Smith, when we're going to get to the symposium that's coming up, there was a new story, particularly this morning as we have this conversation on Asian Americans. And the story actually dealt with how they have been portrayed over the years in film. And the incident that happened this week in Atlanta, and it all stems from the portrayal of Asian Americans over the years on television and in film. And the stereotypical ways that is nowhere near what Asian Americans are really about.

Exactly. And to your point, it's like, when we even start to just think about like race and racism in America, you got to remember a lot of times we, and even black people, this is the same thing with us. Sometimes our first deduction to a certain group of people is these are the what we see in the media. So if the media is presenting a warped stereotypical, very sort of a racist portrayal of a group of people, you start to believe that to be true. And then when you have that image, right, or those images supported by, again, racist, crazy politicians, right, who are perpetuating those stereotypes, right. And then now you're being doubled down on that sort of indoctrination and belief system that certain people are a certain way because of what you've seen and now because of what you hear. And then you go out and you act out in this way. Now, don't get me wrong. And I'm not going to say that the media is always to blame because we must know you know this. This is sort of stitched into the fabric of our country, right.

This is this idea of anyone that is not white sort of being seen as a second class citizen or the second class human, right. That is just stitched into this country. And so all the media does is exactly race something that has always been there. And so you got, you know, again, the foundation of the country, you got the media. Sort of perpetuating the stereotypes, you got politicians again, perpetuating the stereotypes. And then again, you have somebody who goes into, you know, massage following kills people in Atlanta. Because again, this racism has not been checked because it has not been called what it is, right. They, you know, it's sad that you, I mean, you were thinking about the Atlanta phase. And I've not looked at every new story that's coming, obviously, but I don't know if anybody's called this person the terrorists. This is terrorism, right. And, and, and that's what it should be called. But when you should code it and you don't call it what it is. And then you all, you know, we also have this now new term, a bad apple, which I'm so tired of hearing about these bad apples. So such thing as a bad apple, right, that somebody who is birthed out of a system of oppression, right, birthed out of a system of racism and white supremacy.

And they act out in the ways that they've been taught back to what I was just talking about in school or in teaching and film classes. This is saying that it's been taught in in our, in our school, right, our elementary schools, our middle school, the high schools. And this stuff from the moment you sit in the classroom. And so we got to start to interrogate that because once we can look at that and begin to change that. And I think we'll see much more meaningful change happens. If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny Johansson Jr. And you're listening to in black America from KUT radio and speak with Yankee Smith, associate professor of film and associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the moody college of communication at the University of Texas at Austin, special Smith, the inaugural diversity and media symposium is on the horizon. Talk to us about that. Yeah, we are so excited about this me and my team and the college we've been working on putting this together for a year and a half now, obviously, COVID, a derailed us a bit, but we are going to soldier forward and we are having our symposium.

And the name of this particular symposium is this black media, Renaissance, real, and what we were very interested in interrogating and I say, we, me and my team, Chuka Agboraji, who worked with my, with me, on my diversity efforts in the college, and they lean a tent and who's also a graduate student who's also been working on us to put this together. We also had a group of people who sort of came in as advisors to help us find speakers and help us sort of shape this symposium, but basically what we're asking this year is, is this Renaissance, right? Right now we see blackness everywhere, right? We have this Renaissance and black people in film and in journalism, podcasting, you see it everywhere and we're posing the question. Not just is the media Renaissance, we're the black media Renaissance real, but how do we sustain it, right? We have seen moments in history where again, you know, like black people were in a lot of TV shows and then we disappeared and then we had films, right?

I think about the different movements of film, we come in for five years and then we disappear for some reasons. And the question becomes, how do we sustain that movement? And so that's what we'll be interrogating and we have some great speakers. We have Pamela Newkerk, who is a professor at NYU and she wrote his great book called Diversity Eat, the failed promise of a billion dollar business, which I think is great. We have Gene Dindy, who is a podcaster and a co-host of a podcast called Code Switch, Abel Blankson, who is the CEO vice president of marketing and communications for NWACP, Sophia Noble, Tanana Redu, Camille Oshendura, we have so many great people and we'll be dealing with everything from co-opting the black lives matter movement to AI and VR and the bias that can come with that in terms of blackness. We'll be talking about sort of horror and fantasy storytelling and the ways in which you've seen a sort of resurgence of black horror and science fiction films coming out and how they're sort of using that medium to comment on various social issues.

And then we're going to have a panel called How Many More Seek at the Table, which is about sort of black alumni from UT and how they are sort of working across various sectors of the media industry. So we're just very excited about this thing, so I hope everybody will join us. What do you think is the mindset or the thought processes, you know, African-Americans are involved for, you know, three, four years, maybe a decade, and then we fall out of vogue, and then we reemerge this cycle. Like you said, there's no continuation per se of blackness until we assert ourselves for something devastating happened and then we're forced to be on the forefront again. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think when you talk about sort of racism in this country, you also have to talk about capitalism, right?

And the ways in which the black body literally was used to not only fuel the American economy, but to create it, right? And to that end, when you think about these movements, oftentimes we are used, right, to build the economy, right? So when I think about, for example, when I was growing up and you had like the Martins and the living singles and the living colors and you have those shows, there was a time when we were there. But in many ways, you would see those shows disappear, right? After four or five seasons or ever many, they would disappear. And what you realize as you go back and you said to the history is that what they were doing is they were using the black audience to build up the networks. And once they got the network built up, they didn't need us anymore, right? Right, which is in many ways the history of black people in America, we have always been used to build the economy to make sure that it was going to make sure that money was coming in and then once we did what we had to do, we would drop like some hotcakes, right? And that's what we see now, how do you eradicate that or how do you stop that? The way you disrupt something like that is that you stop working for.

Man, but you stop working for the system in that way, you build your own system. So how do you keep a black media renaissance? Well, you have to have money, right? So, for example, when I think of someone like a Tyler Perry, who, you know, is now a billionaire, the way you continue that is telling these to go out and start giving checks on these black indie film makers, right? So that's in weak heat because he has the money not only to fund, but he has the money to distribute, he has the money to give a platform to, and I'm just using him as an example, but there are many others. I have many big stars in Hollywood, who I'm not going to name all of them, but if we really start thinking about that, that's how you open the doors that we have to make sure that we are not only making the content, but, but that we are controlling the way the content is disseminated because we are out there, there is an audience for our work. There is a lot of time studios don't have enough imagination to find that audience.

And if they would give us the power and the money to do it, then we will find our audience because guess what, we are the audience, we're writing for the audience, we understand the audience because we come from the same community as the audience that we're trying to reach. As an academician, but also a practitioner, are you finding students aware of some of the opportunities that they have available to them today? Yes and no, I mean, I think it's, you know, again, it's our responsibility as sort of their instructors to make sure that they are aware. So, right, I'm always teaching my students about like the different festivals that are out there, I'm always, if anything comes across our feed, I'm always sending them emails and I think the college is a really good job of whenever there's a great opportunity there constantly sending emails out to students, putting things on social media, again, things are spreading by word of mouth within the individual unit in the college. Also doing that, and so I think students are becoming more aware, I do, I will say that I do think that we can do a better job of making sure that they're aware, you know, just by again, pushing you know them because one thing that I find, and I've always, you know, my students about this is they make the work.

And then they don't send the work out, right? And it's like, well, what did you make the work for to sit, you know, in your apartment and watching with your friends. And so I'm always constantly like I go through and a lot of people do this, but I go through a whole class when we're talking about the festival platforms and sort of creating a calendar for your festival run and really just exposing them to the various ways that they can get their content out and the various opportunities that are out there for them. So yes, they do know, but I do think that we can do a better job of making sure that they know more. Yeah, I want to know that the thought processes and going back obviously you all had decided on the title on the topic is this black media Renaissance real where the other considerations that were tossed out that you all considered. Yes, I mean, obviously, when we talk about diversity, we're not just talking about black lives, right?

We're talking about, you know, all by far communities, right? We're talking about women, right? And so what we've decided is that each year we would basically dedicate the symposium to exploring an aspect of the eye accessibility social justice, right across the media ecosystem. So this year we decided, okay, we're going to focus on blackness, right? We haven't decided what's coming up, but each year will be a different sort of diverse community that we will focus on because I think in order for us to really, really begin to break down these barriers and these walls. One, we have to have all our ship with each other, right? We can't, we can't say that my pain is more than your pain, or my concern is bigger than yours, because in many ways, if any of us are pressed and we're all oppressed. And so what we plan to do is again, use this symposium on an annual basis to really explore one of these aspects of the eye accessibility social justice. Before we run out of time, Professor Smith, I was particularly interested in new futures, how emerging communication technologies like Al.

Talk to us a little bit about that and how did you all come to conclusion to include that in this first symposium? Yeah, it's so interesting because obviously we are, we are in an era where sort of technology has just taken over, right? I mean, you just, it's everywhere you are, right? I'm talking to you right now via a cell phone, right? I'm here on a computer, right? It's just like we, our whole lives are surrounded, are centered around technology in some way. And I think we all times forget that these technologies were sometimes not created with people of color in mind, right? Yaki Smith, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Associate Professor of Film at the University of Texas at Austin. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions after your future in Black America programs, email us at inblackamerica at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Also, you can listen to a special collection of in Black America programs at American Archive of Public Broadcasting. That's American Archives.org. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Averis, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs. KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.