TV Guide

Saturday

Jul 28, 2018 at 3:49 PM


Twice a year television critics, including the TV Guide staff, group together in fancy hotel ballrooms to preview the season's upcoming new shows and debate the state of television with network executives. Currently, reporters from outlets around the country are basically camping in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel -- the same location of the Golden Globes -- drinking unlimited soft drinks, eating catered food and typing furiously on their laptops about the shows slated to premiere in the upcoming months on cable and broadcast networks.

TV critics are an important resource to promote shows in the age of peak TV. With so many shows on the air, networks want as many reporters as possible to say great things about their show, so they make us comfortable when presenting their new series. None of that really matters to recent high school graduate Charles Donalson III, who attended the Television Critics Association summer press tour to help promote Starz docuseries America to Me, in which he's one of the 12 students followed through a year at the elite Chicago suburb Oak Park and River Forest High School.

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The documentary hopes to show how white privilege affects even middle class students and the educational disparity in affluent neighborhoods. Donalson has had to fight for every opportunity he's been afforded in his 18 years of life, so he didn't mince words when pointing out how even TV critics attempting to be sympathetic don't even recognize their own privilege.

"Jesus Christ, do you know how much food they give out there? You all are laughing, but I'm dead serious right now," Donalson rhetorically asked a room full of journalists. "I was in here yesterday watching all the people it takes just to set up this room. Literally situations like this where you are hoarding wealth -- that's the same thing that Oak Park is doing. That's the same thing in this country. It's because white people are selfish. It's because the people in power don't want to give us they money they have. They don't want to give us the privilege they have. S--t, they don't even want to give us books."

There are many moments when TCA panelists get more honest than their publicists would like -- Tom Arnold did it on Thursday! -- but very rarely does a panelist have the guts to point the finger back at those sitting in the room. To be honest, Donalson wasn't wrong. At another lavish TCA event, we found out they have to throw out half the food not eaten by the journalists and guests because it's a liability issue to donate it to shelters. They feed us a lot, by the way. Donalson's blunt and truthful takedown of the situation right in front of his eyes was a necessary and eye-opening pop in the bubble of opulence we TV critics surround ourselves with at press tour, TV premieres and the like. It's only with that kind of confrontation that we can do our jobs better and take a second to look beyond our laptops at the real world outside of it instead of critiquing it in a vacuum.

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Donalson's speech wasn't just to journalists though. He said everything in front of the Academy-Award nominated documentarian Steve James who helmed America to Me as well. Even if James is trying to do good by showing another side of the black American story, he's still an affluent white man who can't ever fully understand the plight of his subjects.

"[The documentary] shows how hard it was for black kids once they're in Oak Park, but it doesn't really show how hard it is for black kids to get to Oak Park," he said. "If you don't live in that suburb they will kick you out. If they have reason to believe you don't live there, they will follow you home...I think that was a bad influence. It was hard going to a school where no one wants me there."

To Donalson's credit, he's not looking for anyone to understand his plight -- he's looking for the solution so that he and people like him don't have to have a plight anymore.

"Go out there and help someone that looks like me. Go help someone that looks like you, but take away from this that this doesn't need to be happening. Y'all can give us any type of light, any type of story, any type of shine, but until you start helping us and until you start putting us in positions where we don't need the spotlight -- For you to actually say you care, act like you care," Donalson said in his final directive. "Don't write about the show, write about the problems that the show is dealing with, the struggles that made the show possible."

America to Me premieres Aug. 26 on Starz.

Charles Donalson III, America to Me

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