This year’s BET awards were abysmal. But it crossed a line when Lil’ Wayne brought on underage girls to his song “Every Girl,” causing a stir of controversy.

This leads me to a singular question. It is possible that Black Entertainment Television has done more damage to the African American posterity than any white supremacy group ever has done or ever could do? My personal opinion is in the affirmative. The Little Rock Nine, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X, all were great losses but they did come with a none to subtle benefit. It brought the black community together at a national level and brought attention to the harshness of African American life in those times.

The same cannot be said of BET for this is damage that we are doing to ourselves, none of it in the best interest of the community. But why should it be? We should remember that BET is, first and foremost, a company, and companies have one function: to make money. For this reason alone it is difficult to get them to change, at least in some vein, the nature of their programming. Why try something knew when the old tactics remain profitable? We should not expect them to be acting in are best interest as long as the money is in the opposite hand.

My criticisms are hardly anything new

Yet as I am confounded with images from BET and read in the news about the ever publicized downfall of the economy I can not help but see a resemblance, most notably, that the action of a few negligible and greedy business has caused a downfall and has set us years back. One should think it strange that “black shows” such as the Wire, Black in America and others, profitable shows as they were, never thought twice about having their first air on BET. It should be their first choice not one they should abstain from. For this reason I should say: BET is our recession.

There is something to be learned though from the current situation of the economy and how our first black President is handling the situation. Like our economy, BET needs an stimulus package of sorts, an intellectual stimulus package. Like President Obama dropped an enormous amount of money into the economy all at once, hoping to cause ripples of turnaround BET needs a massive dosage of intelligible conversation marketed to the African American lineage.

One should be able to list the black public intellectuals off the top of their heads by now: Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., Toni Morrison, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, not to mention my personal favorite, Dr. Cornel West, and I dare add our current president on that list as well. It seems evident, that problem is not lack of intelligence just a lack of congruity. We see a speech by one of these talented persons in this corner of the web or that. And when these men and women criticize the programming of BET, they fall on the deaf ear of the puerile minds they attempt to reach.

To reclaim that which used to be the black culture, or at least some better variation it begins with BET. Concerted and efforts need to emerge from all those concerned, specifically from the above. The African American intelligentsia must bring their intellect to BET not expect teenagers to turn it off and come to them.

What should these include? It seems there is only one answer. Variation is needed at the forefront; variation that essentially says that your lifestyle, is not the only lifestyle out there. The reason that channels such as HBO can get away with shows like the Sopranos is because of this. Viewers have choice in what they want to view, they are continually pounded with different lifestyles from which they can pick and choose at their leisure and are not burdened with the same stereotypical and naïve view on a constant basis..

BET should be this for the African American community.