How Much Is Too Much?

Professor Tracey, WAOD Contributor

I am not a Britney Spears fan and I am not a big fan of watching any celebrity public spectacle or downward spiral. After skipping numerous channels focusing on her latest extremely public breakdown and patiently watching a segment about her on Keith Olbermann, I was thoroughly disgusted. How much is too much? Yes, she is a celebrity and part of the cost of fame is living your life in the public eye, but I saw a woman going to pieces in front of her children. It's not about liking Spears or what she brought it on herself, but where are we as a nation that we enjoy watching such sadness? And for me particularly, when I see such lack of concern and compassion toward a white woman and her children, I know in my heart that women of color and their children are in deep trouble.

Many times on this blog we have expressed such hopelessness about the complete indifference to the violence leveled at black women and girls, particularly in the case of Dunbar Village. My question is what do you do in a country where watching the destruction of a family (in Britney Spears' case) is a public past time? What do you do in a nation that laments and blames the struggles of black people on their failure to build and maintain families, yet gleeful watches with anticipation the dismantling of the idea of family? Are we really that crass and cynical as a country?

As much was made of Obama's "historic" victory in Iowa, my excitement was at the "historic" moment of him standing on that stage with his very black family. I truly wonder do Americans really believe in family or is it something we pay lip service to? What do you think?