I’ve had it! I can’t take it any more. I cannot bear to have one more Black Awards show go on like this. That’s right, this is a cease and desist notice to: The NAACP Image Awards, The BET Awards, The Soul Train Awards, The Vh1 Hip-Hop Honors, The Source Awards, The You’re a Person of Color Awards, (okay you caught me—I made the last one up). However the point remains, the more Black Award shows we seem to have, the lower quality they seem to get!

Saturday night, I watched the Image Awards in trepidation and pain. Each time the camera cut to Sandra Bullock I wondered, “Is she really about to win an NAACP Image award for her role in a movie where a Black guy can only be saved by football and White folks?” Thankfully, she didn’t so I didn’t have to send the angry email I prepared for Ben Jealous. Nonetheless, the show was still painful as I watched Tyler Perry recieve the Chairman’s award for building an empire on stereotypes. As they turned on the music to stop Lee Daniel’s acceptance speech, cut away from him and turned down the lights, I had to ask myself, “Is the best we can do?”

Our awards shows should represent the best we have to offer from our community and showcase our talents and accomplishments to the world. Instead, we keep making more mediocre awards shows to satisfy cultural turf. Maybe we should think about consolidating or maybe just doing better! Think about it, do we really need another poor quality Michael Jackson Tribute? Do we need to award ”that Black guy”, you know, the one whose face we’ve seen but no one knows his name? Or worst yet, do we need another Jamie Foxx performance? I think not! Let us rise up as a people and put a stop to the tomfoolery that has become Black Award Shows. If we don’t stop now, next year we’ll be watching T-Pain accepting Image Awards for his album RevolveR … I’m pretty sure none of us want that!

TAGS: JAMIE FOXX, Lee Daniels, NAACP Image Awards, Sandra Bullock, T-PAIN, Tyler Perry