The NIU Black Graduate Student Association hosted a panel discussion Monday asking if the media has an influence on black male and female relationships.

Hosts Kellie Armstead, a BGSA member, and Ed Quinn, a Black Student Union member, started the discussion by talking about the images shown on music videos.

“The videos to my favorite songs make me feel ashamed of my body and how people look at me,” said panelist Tracy Stuckey, a BGSA member.

Stuckey said it’s more important to have a deeper understanding as to why theses images are there.

“We live in a media-driven society,” Student Association treasurer Troy Caldwell said. “Like my father always said, ‘If you filter enough garbage, it will consume you.

“It is sad, but material wealth is prevalent even on college campuses,” Caldwell added. “There are plenty of girls at NIU that won’t talk to a guy unless he has a car with rims and chrome.”

During the argument, panelists said that what you see and act on is by choice.

“You choose the type of person that you allow into your life,” said Lonnie Pollard, vice-president of BROTHERS. “If you want someone who is goal-orientated, then that is the image you should portray, too.”

A comment was made that the reason these images are portrayed is because people are attracted to it.

“If you put meat out, then don’t be surprised that dogs are going to come out to eat,” said Yasir Mohammed, a member of the Nation of Islam Student

Association. “If we don’t buy it or feed into it, there wouldn’t be a market for it.”

An audience member asked about the goal of the media’s negative portrayals, to which communication instructor Antwon Hampton said it’s illogical to think that the media sets our standard.

“The only time we’ve prospered is when we set our own standard,” Hampton said.

Mohammed said it is the goal of the media to destroy the family.

“When you look at immigrants, they come as families,” Mohammed said. “But when black people rise in this society, they come as individuals. The mental

slavery is the injustice that loses the family, which destroys the male and female relationships.”

Hampton said black people are influenced by a number of outlets.

“Black people are influenced by music from church hymns, rap videos and Negro spirituals,” Hampton said. “Music can easily be used to corrupt and brainwash black people as well.”

Van Amos, program coordinator at the Center for Black Studies, asked if holidays create material relationships.

Mohammed said when blacks integrate with white society, they accept their values and lifestyles, which include holidays.

“In that society, they define our relationships,” Mohammed said. “Valentine’s Day is a pagan holiday of false poets and false dreams.”

Caldwell said it is more important for those present not to harp on what society has done; rather what those present can do to discontinue the perpetuation of this injustice.

NIU alumnus Algenoy Alexander said the problem with male and female relationships among black people is correlated directly with white supremacy.

“White supremacy is the worst thing that happened to black people in America,” Alexander said. “The European patriarch society is what we follow. Whites may not say it, but they degrade their women daily. When blacks couldn’t vote neither could their [white] women. This is what is influencing us.”

As a solution, Alexander suggests going to a more holistic point of view that people exist in a balance of matriotism and patriotism.