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Jill Nelson
The Huffington Post
"This country cannot be the country we want it to be if its story is
told by only one group of citizens. Our goal is to give all
Americans front-door access to the truth." -- Robert C. Maynard
(Maynard was one of the founders of the 30-year-old Maynard
Institute for Journalism Education, which works to increase
diversity in staffing, content and business operations of American
media.)
I know its bad form to mention race and upset the new post-racial
apple cart, the one that doesn't even have a black chauffer like the
genial Hoke to drive Miss Daisy around. Nope, in this post-racial
world Hoke's been laid off or taken the buy-out. (At least 300 black
journalists left the print media in 2007, and there's every
indication that 2008 was worse. Richard Prince's Journal-isms column
at www.mije.org is an ongoing record of attrition.) In this brave
new world the playing field's level, Dr. King's dream's been
realized, and it's all about the meritocracy. Yet a look at the
unbearably white American media reminds us that even with a black
president little has changed in terms of who frames the issues. With
the exception of CNN, which probably employs more black people than
BET and definitely has more news coverage, for the most part media
looks like a meeting of the White Citizens Council, circa 1956. As
determined to retain control of the dialogue as those racists were
to maintain the Southern way of life.
Why is it okay for George Will to have President Obama to dinner
with conservative journalists with not a black face in the room? How
many journalists attended parties in Washington during the
inauguration where there were no journalists of color present? Isn't
it disturbing to the journalistic establishment that the vast
majority of journalists, commentators, talking heads, pundits, and
experts discussing the new president and his administration are
white? In 2009 can anyone seriously argue that aren't more than a
handful of black, Latino, Asian, or Native Americans who fit these
categories? Is this time for change we can believe in, or is it
still time for black to get back?
For two years I'd managed, along with most black people, to go along
with one of the unspoken shibboleths to the election of Barack Obama
and kept my mouth closed about racial issues, fearing that such a
discussion would be harmful to Obama. This in spite of Bill Clinton
showing his ass in South Carolina; Hillary's absurd suggestion that
Obama wouldn't know what to do when the phone rang at 3 AM; and John
McCain's barely veiled white supremacist campaign. Yet the failure
of much of the media to recognize the words of the Negro National
Anthem as the first words of Reverend Joseph Lowery's benediction at
the inauguration was truly pitiful. That, followed by the general
incomprehension of the rhyme at the end of Lowery's remarks -- "When
black will not be asked to get in back/When brown can stick
around..." -- and then its erroneous attribution by a CNN employee
to a civil rights song, rather than rooted in African American folk
and oral tradition and the dozens -- a game of verbal insult and
one-upmanship -- made it impossible to maintain silence.
It's profoundly dishonest and morally wrong that media coverage of
Barack Obama and his presidency is framed by an almost exclusively
white press corp. Not just the White House press corps, whose
unbearable whiteness Sam Fulwood III wrote eloquently about on
theRoot.com in December, 2008. Turn on the television. Most of the
reporters -- the ones with shows of their own, steady jobs and
influence - are white. Is there no other journalist of color in
America besides Gwen Ifill of PBS' Washington Week (fabulous as she
is) who could host a news show? (Sorry, CNN, the comedian D.L.
Hughley doesn't count.) Apparently not, since when Ifill takes the
occasional Friday off her show often becomes segregated.
The absence of African Americans is appalling in light of the
plethora of white people from someplace else, especially England,
getting paid to frame, spin and explain Barack Obama to Americans. I
doubt that I could get a job parsing Gordon Brown to the Brits. At
the "serious" magazines, the situation is dismal. Years ago, an
editor at The New Yorker told me the reason there weren't more black
writers at the magazine was that they didn't understand the
publication's "zeitgeist."
What's really changed if the American media continues to view this
new administration, and a world that is overwhelmingly populated by
black, brown, and yellow people, through white eyes? In this same
old world but with a new name, a Black man is president of the
United States, but it takes a white man to play him on Saturday
Night Live. Arrogance and privilege by another name?
Call me a retro, angry black woman -- or Stokely Carmichael in a
designer dress, as Juan Williams, one of the few journalists of
color white journalists deign to recognize, called Michelle Obama
last weekend -- but why is it that whenever the impact of race is
analyzed the role that white privilege plays is absent? In
journalism, the result is always the same: white people who are
granted the role of analyzing everything and everyone, including
African Americans, who are as likely as not to be dismissed,
overlooked, or spoken for by white expert opinion.
In reality, this post-modern, post-racial apple cart is for whites
only, a dishonest and opportunistic effort to pretend race no longer
matters now that Americans have elected Barack Obama president. Post
racial is nothing but segregation under a kinder, gentler name, yet
another effort to further enshrine white privilege and white
supremacy.
What a waste, in this time of profound crisis and the possibilities
Barack Obama's presidency presents, to have those possibilities
identified and interpreted by whites only. Filtered through the
tired lens of whiteness in a twenty-first century in which the
attacks of 9/11, American failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
implosion of the markets and the collapse of capitalism are
signposts along the road of the dying white culture.
In this auspicious moment, media organizations should be seeking out
journalists of color and youth. Instead it's the same old white
guys, many of whom seem to verge on apoplexy as they struggle to
"explain" Obama. It's as if he, like Klaatu from The Day the Earth
Stood Still, fell from the sky, ahistorical, exceptionalist, and, I
fear, soon to be, like Oprah or Michael Jordan, conveniently
de-raced. This inability to fathom Barack Obama doesn't come as a
surprise. For the most part these media heads have managed to live
lives absent any serious engagement with black people or black
culture. If they had, they would be familiar with the existence of
the black middle class, a long-established group of overachievers
whose mantra is that you have to work harder, smarter, and be better
than your white counterparts to achieve the same results.
Barack Obama is neither an anomaly nor an aberration. He is simply
the most successful member of this class of overachievers. His
election lays to rest the myth of the meritocracy. Perhaps more
amazing than the election of Barack Obama is that someone of his
intellect and limitless possibility even wanted the job. Be clear:
Barack Obama is part of a continuum. Now that he's broken the glass
ceiling it's time for whites to step up their game. Stay tuned.
As candidate and President Obama has made clear, change we need
requires sacrifice from all of us. It's not just about black kids
pulling up their pants, or working harder in school, or more
parental involvement. Nor is it just the overt racists and skinheads
who need to get it together. The less obvious and likely more
difficult change must come from the chattering class, many of them
entrenched liberals and progressives to whom it has never occurred
that they are the beneficiaries of white skin privilege.
There are countless black journalists and other journalists of color
who can add skill, knowledge, cultural context and depth to covering
America's first black president, as part of the White House press
corps and in every area of journalism. They should be hired.
Post-racial, bah humbug! Meritocracy, ha! I know the road to white
privilege when I see it, Miss Daisy, whatever you want to call it. |
