History Falsified, Not Satirized by UPN Show

As the Civil War raged in July 1862, President Abraham Lincoln told a group of black men at the White House, “I think your race suffer greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. It affords a reason at least why we should be separated.”

This wasn’t the first time that Lincoln publicly advocated racial separation. In countless speeches, he made it clear that if he could save the Union “without freeing any slave,” he would do it. Ultimately, he grudgingly freed some slaves, but only as a wartime measure. And even then he was careful to remind whites that he did not believe in social equality for blacks, and that if he had his way, he would ship the whole lot of them to Africa or an island in the Caribbean.

Yet in the comedy “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,” which debuted Oct. 5 on the UPN network, we are asked to believe that an African American sits in the big chair at the White House as a principal advisor to Lincoln. Keep in mind this is before the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865 that formally abolished slavery.

The UPN farce not only stands history on its head, it dismembers it. With the series deservedly under attack, the producers have trotted out two shopworn lines to justify this historical absurdity. They claim that it’s only comedy, and that history, even its painful events, is fair game for parody. The other claim is that many blacks who’ve seen the tapes of the pilot find nothing wrong with it.

Both are self-serving, if not outright ridiculous claims.

There is nothing wrong with satirizing historical events. There is everything wrong with falsifying them. There is not a fig of historic truth that Lincoln, during the time of slavery--or, for that matter, any 19th century president during the rigid system of Jim Crow segregation in the years after the Civil War--socially fraternized with African Americans, let alone sought their political advice. That would be as absurd as the notion that Hitler would make a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp one of his trusted advisors.

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The comparison UPN producers make with the comedy “Hogan’s Heroes” is just as silly. The fact is that there were Americans in Nazi prisoner of war camps during World War II. They were mistreated. Some were beaten and killed. But when the war ended, the survivors were released, and they returned to their former lives. Blacks had no such luxury under slavery. They were totally stripped of their language, culture and humanity, and bought and sold like cattle.

What about the fact that some blacks approve of “Pfeiffer”? Many blacks have also mobbed theaters and laughed at the ancient racial stereotypes of crime, dope, guns, freaky sex, cartoon caricatures and human wrecks that are paraded across the screen as the reality of black life in the black-themed movies of the 1990s. So it’s hardly surprising that many do not understand that the monstrous violence, brutality, pain, suffering and degradation of slavery cannot and should not be the subject of humor.

The sad truth is that “Desmond Pfeiffer” is the latest and most absurd addition to the long list of network assassinations of the black image. But this time we must say enough is enough and tell UPN that this is one diary that should permanently stay secret to viewers.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of “The Crisis in Black and Black.” He can be reached at [email protected].