“Education is that whole system of human training without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.” The words of W. E. B. Du Bois echoed throughout the halls of Du Bois College House, seeking to educate students and community members alike.
Saturday, Du Bois College House hosted its annual Souls of Du Bois Conference, featuring keynote speaker Marc Lamont Hill and multiple panel discussions on current issues. This year, the conference was titled “Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters,” in tandem with the University’s “Year of Water.” One panel, titled “BET: Plight of Black Culture?” raised students’ consciousness of masked messages in the media.
Du Bois Faculty master, Rev. Will Gipson, explained that the students themselves titled every panel, adding he could not have agreed more with their choices of words for this particular discussion. The panel was composed of Valerie Adams of the Graduate School of Education, Director of the International Black Film Festival Allen Dawson and College senior Ryan Jobson, an Africana Studies major.
Each speaker expressed his or her thoughts on the student-generated title and the positive and negative influences of Black Entertainment Television. The discussion was moderated by Shannon Holmes, a graduate student in GSE, in the discussion.
Adams noted that the issues “are bigger than BET.” Dawson encouraged students to be active, critical consumers rather than passively listening to music or watching television. He explained that “we live in a media culture” and “media images are derived from a conscious marriage of government and Hollywood.” Jobson also critiqued BET for its monolithic representation of black culture and its lack of attention to those from the Caribbean and the African Diaspora.
When Dawson said “buying a movie ticket is like casting a vote,” Holmes asked each panelist to agree or disagree with the statement and to pinpoint “what exactly are we voting for?”
The discussion shifted to capitalism at the expense of righteousness and the responsibility of consumers to differentiate between “good” and “bad” media.
Gipson praised the panel for critiquing BET without diminishing hip-hop culture as a whole. He said the panel raised the consciousness of Penn students and West Philadelphia residents.
College freshman Ernest Owens, who attended the panel, said it was “enlightening. It made me think a lot about the kinds of things I’m watching on TV or listening to, and the kinds of things I buy.”
