BET Awards 2009 - The Aftermath

The "Aftermath" revealed that there is still a great divide in race relations in this country and social media.

Before we talk about the aftermath, let's imagine the characters from the WIZ had the opportunity to travel to Los Angeles and witness the 2009 BET Awards. Can't you see the shock all over their faces? Their conclusion like mine and many others on Twitter and Facebook on Sunday would be that it was a hot ghetto mess. It was the Sunday afternoon family get-together that went on a little too long and the longer folks stayed the more ignorant it got! The best tweet of the night: "I wished BET died and MJ gave a tribute to them."

Let's see what our family members did. Well, everyone forgot how to sing except for Neyo, Monica, and Maxwell (Little KeKe could sang too). Jamie grabbed his crotch too many times, said he had a boa in his pants, and almost fell down trying to do the moonwalk; Beyonce went opera on us; Kanye kind of sat in the corner with his girl, didn't say much, he must be in love. Lil' Wayne cussed and brought little girls up on the stage; Ving Rhames cussed and scared the sh*t out of us; uncle Don Cornelius babbled; then grandpa Eddie Levert cussed some more because that's what he do. Alicia Keys looked good, but that pimple was working it for all the attention. Zoe told ev'rbody that grandma Uhuru was in the bathroom two times; yeah Tevin was there, we ain't seen Tevin in years, (you know he's out the closet). ...and Bobby Brown was bloated.

Did I miss anything? I'm sure I did. But what did we expect-THIS WAS THE BET AWARDS!, and family still had a good time with tweets on Twitter and updates on Facebook. However not everyone was happy in Twitterville. I don't know why? Everybody was invited...

There was tweet backlash based on the trending topics on Twitter on Sunday evening. For the entire evening during the show it seemed Black folks took over Twitter. Wow, some media/marketing person should be thinking there's another great way to reach the African American audience in a way never thought of before. BET's continuous promotion of their Twitter account during the show probably helped.

However as I stated earlier, not everyone was happy. In the post BET Awards Dominate Twitter, Causes Racist Backlash from Black Web 2.0, blogger Angela Benton writes...

It seems like whenever African-American topics dominate media there are always some unhappy campers. Social Media is no different. Within hours it spawned a site on Tumblr, OMGBlackPeople.Tumblr.com. Tumblr has taken down the site since last night but the Twitter account @omgblackpeople is still alive and kicking. Apparently many people on Twitter wanted trending topics to go back to what they were use to seeing, here’s a smidgen of what was on the site:




Did anyone see the new trending topics? I dont think this is a very good neighborhood. Lock the car doors kids.



Here's an additional tweet during the BET Awards from @omgblackpeople Just keep looking straight ahead and don't make eye contact. If we don't bother them, they won't bother us. Hold your purse close.

Read More of the full article and see more Twitter screenshots. Thanks Black Web 2.0 for bringing attention to this matter. Here's an experiment for you to try that I tried when I had a myspace account. (I got rid of it after the Obama monkey cartoon in the New York Post, because News Corp owns myspace, FOX news and the Post.) Try making 20 friend requests with people from another race. I tried it with many people in radio and media outside of an urban format. Not much success except for a guy named Merkin.

Race doesn't seem to matter with facebook and Twitter, so there's some progress there. I can't believe I'm posting this, this is 2009 and it's sad. I guess the lyrics about it doesn't matter in Michael Jackson's song "Black or White" aren't true, are they?