2003-2004 BlackNews.com $1,000
Scholarship Winner

Meet Dominique Camm - an 18-year old college student from Virginia Beach, VA. This honor student-athlete attends North Carolina A&T University - a historically black institution in Greensboro, NC. He has always had in interest in writing, philosophy, and poetry. In writing the essay for the BlackNews.com scholarship, he realized that his talents would be better developed getting a Political Science degree instead of an Electrical Engineering degree. As a rising sophomore, he is Mr. VA Aggie in the Virginia Aggies Club, he's a member of the A&T Track Team, and he's the MEAC Champion in the High Jump. He is also a member of the D&D Poetic Society. His essay was selected as the most superb amongst the 5,000 essays that were submitted via email and postal mail. Here's his essay below:

Why The Black Community
Needs Black News Mediums

Why are Black news mediums important when we can easily rely on other news sources to tell our story? After all, the history books that we were raised on did such a great job of including the African American perspective that I feel that we as a people do not need to know about the small individual efforts that piece by piece contributed to where we are today. All we need to know is what was taught in the books from outsiders about our own culture, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Nobody else made any type of contribution toward the civil rights movement. Black radio, newspapers, magazines, and web sites are not necessary to knowing the positive things that Black people are doing everyday. We can just sit back and watch the regular news which always publicizes the great things happening in the Black community. Also the mainstream news medium always accurately portrays us. I do not think we could possibly do a better job of informing people on issues, current events, and achievements that occur inside our community. We do not need any more of our youth filling up the professions in Black media because it is an overcrowded profession as is. We should encourage our youth to stick to basketball or rapping. Do not be a journalist, orator, writer, analyst, editor, photographer, correspondent, or anything else that involves reading for a profession. Reading is antiquated; we got by without knowing how to read when we were beaten for reading, so why enlighten ourselves. We do not need role models like Tom Joyner, Tavis Smiley, or Earl Graves Sr. We can stick to Kobe Bryant, and R. Kelly. Nothing important is written inside of Ebony or Essence. Not only is Black Nationalism at an all time high, but we are not even the biggest minority group anymore. We can just sit back and let BET and the newspapers being sold with a side of bean pie and incense tell the Black story, because we have already arrived in the year 2003.

Ignorance is bliss, and the hardest thing to do is to get up and find and tell truth. There was a time when there were no Black radio stations, and few Black's could read. So the newspapers like The North Star, by Frederick Douglass, and Liberator by William Lloyd Garrison could not be read by every member of the Black community. Not every member of the Black community had the liberty to go see orations done by abolitionists and proponents of civil rights reform. Currently we do have that liberty and the status of African American literacy is at least some high school education, yet Black news mediums are not being supported by our community enough. Even positive Black radio, which is free to listen to, is being placed on the backburner to more entertaining radio programming. Few people have even heard of W.E.B. Dubois's Crisis magazine, which is still in circulation. Even fewer people can name a major Black newspaper in circulation. Knowledge is power, and as clichéd as that phrase is, it is truth. Our community is not being informed enough about the everyday success that happens in our community. We are ignorant of the events occurring in our community like the marches, speeches, and forums on Black issues. The epidemics plaguing our society like AIDS, poverty, drugs, the police, and lack of higher education our not being called attention to by mainstream media. Black Nationalism is like chivalry, it exists only in the minds of those who remember it. Our community is known positively only for the entertainment it provides, and as the second biggest minority our voice has to be twice as loud as before or we shall sink into the abyss of non-existence.

(continued)

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Malcolm X stated there are two ways of demonstrating the power that exists within a cultural group. There are Ballots, and there are Bullets. Not only does a Black news medium secure jobs for Black employees and keep Black money circulating in the Black community, it is our strongest voice. Through Marcus Garvey's Negro World United Negro Improvement Association was able to reach and instill a sense of Black pride within millions of Blacks. Malcolm X's and Dr. Martin Luther King's thunderous orations fueled the civil rights movement into a new era of confrontation. In addition to these orators making passionate, inspiring speeches, journalists captured the individual horrors, struggles, photos, and stories of everything happening during that era. Because without every moment being described by the media to the rest of the nation, only the South would believe the atrocities happening during that time. The marches and demonstrations would not have been so successful if nobody saw them, heard about them or knew about them in advance to participate in them. That's where the Black news medium comes in.

Self reliance is a seldom-spoke-of concept in current times, but it's what all advocates of Black Civil Rights spoke on. They may not have agreed on methods of how to be self reliant, but Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois would both agree that the Negro has to be able to stand on his own two feet and provide for himself before he can advance in any other endeavor. Without successful mass media approaches to guide the Black community, we can not move forward. The internet is the way of the future, radio is still an easy way to reach audiences from any background, newspapers and magazines still circulate employment and money in any community, and the African American community has to have a strong hold in all of those mediums. If we do not have strong ways of communicating with and guiding our community, we can always rely on mainstream society to teach and correspond with us through history books and the daily news. We can only look to our community for entertainment, not enlightenment.

Dominique Camm
ironmandcamm@aol.com