Clinton church protests BET

The church is planning to protest at the Warner Theater where the BET Honors award show is scheduled to be taped Saturday. The protest rally starts at 6 p.m. with assemblies on the corners of 13th and E streets and 13th and F streets NW.

‘‘Men are portrayed as thugs and pimps and women are shown as sexual objects,” said the Rev. Delman Coates, pastor at Mt. Ennon.

Coates said that even though these concerns have been around for a long time, the fact that the images are becoming part of the mainstream consciousness and even gaining acceptance is troubling.

However, Jeanine Liburd, a BET spokesperson, said the network works hard to represent all aspects of black culture.

‘‘BET shares [Coates’] concerns about the negative portrayal of black people in the media,” Liburd said. ‘‘Over the past two years, we’ve invested in more original programming that explores a wide range of experiences in black culture.”

Liburd said BET understands the problems inherent with reflecting a race that is not monolithic but has few other media outlets.

Much of Coates’ concern is based around a specific group of music videos that air on the station. But Liburd said recently that BET has cut its video content from 80 percent to 20 percent. Replacing these videos are original programs and news documentaries like ‘‘Sunday Best,” a gospel program with well-known gospel singer Kirk Franklin and ‘‘Exalted,” a program about ministers across the country. Another recent program Liburd cited was ‘‘Hip-Hop vs. America,” a news documentary about the images of women in hip -hop.

Still, Coates said the positive programming is just a mask for the negative programming that still exists.

‘‘The problem with BET is that they try to distract people from the negative,” he said. ‘‘The positives are great but they have to deal with the negatives. Those videos are still up there.”

Julia Pollard, a parishioner at Mt. Ennon who helps organize the protests said these images do a lot of harm.

‘‘These images are shown throughout the world,” she said. ‘‘The lasting glances are that all African American guys are thugs and pimps and all African American girls are scantily clad and shaking their booties. And that’s not true.”

There also has been controversy over the church protesting at Lee’s home every Saturday since Sept. 15. But Pollard said since she is the person in charge of change at the network that the church wanted to send a personal message.

‘‘If you bring negative images into my home,” she said. ‘‘Then we are taking it back to your home.”

About 350 people attended the initial planning meeting Aug. 4, and each Saturday about 50 people have come out to protest at Lee’s house. Also, more than 350 people attended a Town Hall forum at Mt. Ennon on Dec. 10.

‘‘We’ve come too far in educating our children for this to happen,” Pollard said. ‘‘They need to remove these negative images.”