'BLACK IN AMERICA 2'

New episodes air 2 p.m. tomorrow - Sunday
Repeats at 5, 8 and 10 p.m.
CNN

The stories rippling through CNN's second “Black in America” series cover a broad swath.

One person rolls out comedies, almost assembly-line; another works with cancer patients, one-on-one. One takes teens to South African villages; another takes young executives to the corporate top.
These have only one key thing in common: Compared to the first “Black in America” series last summer, they are vigorously upbeat.
“We need to do the stories of people who are making a difference,” said Johnita Due, who chairs CNN's diversity council. “A lot of people were saying, 'When will you showcase what we are doing?'”
That partly reflects the two years: In 2008, people saw the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's death; in 2009, they saw the start of Barack Obama's presidency.
“That's the No. 1 thing – this is thinking about solutions,” said CNN's Chris Lawrence.
As the network's Pentagon reporter, he's used to short reports. Now he marvels at a project that will sprawl over four hours July 22-23, plus a follow-up forum,.
“My stories are a minute, 30 (seconds) or two minutes,” Lawrence said. “To have that amount of time, you can really get into something.”
Lawrence didn't work on these films, but he did introduce an advance screening in his home town of Detroit. He fielded comments that showed the complexity of the issues.
One story focuses on Tyler Perry, a successful playwright who drew shrugs from Hollywood, with one person telling him “black people who go to church don't go to the movies.”
His movies (starting with “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”) have included church-going characters and drawn crowds. Now he's built his own Atlanta studio and back lot, where he makes movies and does comedy series (“House of Payne,” “The Browns”) for TBS, a sister station to CNN.
He's a success, but does he do good work? The special includes Todd Boyd, a University of Southern California professor who bemoaned the buffoons in those show: “Tyler Perry has gone backwards.”
That drew applause from the Detroit audience, but so did comments leaning toward support of Perry.
“White folks have no monopoly on being wise,” said the Rev. Wendell Anderson, president of Detroit's NAACP chapter. “Black folks have no monopoly on being buffoons … But the bottom line is, the brother owns the studio!”
Other stories will draw less controversy. There is the Capital Prepatory Magnet School in Hartford, Conn., which says that all of its graduates have gone to college. There's John Rice, who shows blacks how to reach the top of corporations. There's Black Marriage Day and a Chicago barbershop that encourages medical check-ups.
There's Malaak Compton-Rock (the wife of comedian Chris Rock), who took teens to South Africa. Michelle Rozsa, who produced that report, watched one boy's transformation. “He was so painfully shy, I though she was never going to choose him.” He ended up taping with a CNN camera.
And there's Dr. Lisa Newman, a surgical oncologist at the University of Michigan Hospital. The daughter of a New York lawyer, she's moved to the top of the health field.
There's still a huge shortfall there, Newman said. “About 2 percent of health-c are people are African-American and 2 percent are Latino, compared to 12 percent for each in the population.”
If you consider only doctors, the percentage is even lower.
This doctor, however, makes a difference. Dawn Spencer, 47, said she's feeling fine after three operations by Lewis. “Her spirit was the thing that impressed me the most. She was so positive.”
That's roughly the same spirit that encases “Black in America 2.”