Tanisha Ford Joins Hot97 Panel on Blacks in Entertainment

It’s February, which means this is Black History Month.

This is the period in which we celebrate the accomplishments of the past, while paying close attention to where we are now, in the hopes of shaping a better future. This past Sunday, Hot 97, New York’s largest hip hop station, featured a relevant conversation that dealt with Blacks in entertainment. The conversation was hosted by Lisa Evers (@LisaEvers) on their “Street Soldiers” program.

We’re in an era where the African American onscreen presence in unprecedented. Network hit shows such as Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, Being Mary Jane, Black-ish, Gotham, and Empire all feature strong African American lead characters. And television producer/director Shonda Rhimes is at the center of much of it. We’ve seen shows such as Motown: The Musical, Porgy & Bess, A Trip to Bountiful, and Stickfly thrive on Broadway. Yet, this year’s list of Oscar nominees is the whitest we’ve seen in nineteen years and Chris Rock still has valid reasons to go in on the seemingly immovable racial barriers in Hollywood.

So how do we assess the progress African Americans are making in certain areas of entertainment, while we remain locked out of others? Join this robust conversation that features historian and author of Liberated Threads: Black Women and the Politics of Adornment,  Tanisha Ford (@SoulistaPhD); Boardwalk Empire star, Stephen Hill (@StephenHillActs); Motown: The Musical star, Lisa Nicole Wilkeron; Michael John Jefferies, (@MikeJohnJ).