Back in Black

Tracing 40 years of African American Progress/ Regress

Photography by Jeremy Freeman/CNN

(page 1 of 3)

in 1996 hip hop luminaries de la soul chronicled the dire state of the union with their fourth album’s title track conservatively titled “Stakes is High.” Their somber serenade was an innovative, sonically intoxicating assault on a sleeping public who, in their opinion, were both crippled by the degree of societal woes plaguing the nation and overly content with the shallow yet steady materialism that saturated popular culture. Today we find that for many African Americans the stakes are still as high as ever and the panacea of honest dialogue so eloquently evoked by De La’s battle cry has resurfaced with little substance, a chorus of muted whispers. Many high profile media outlets seem to prefer to project the current state of Black America through overt sensationalism when they are compelled to un-tuck the racial debate out from underneath the golden veil of silence. In spite of this trend, cnn’s special correspondent Soledad O’Brien has taken a direct approach. The six hour Black in America documentary pairs O’Brien’s journalistic savvy with scholars and the public to assess the issues that have come to embody the great American skin game. Issues of Black identity and progress (or lack thereof ) reflect some of our countries most polemical characteristics; the callous and the sensitive, the past and the present, the black and the white. The Green Magazine caught up with the ambitious anchor after the Steve Harvey Classic to find out, “what is happening in Black America today and exactly how De La is Soledad?"