RACE in MEDIA

 From The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/daily/2003/05/2003052004n.htm

Tuesday, May 20, 2003

To My Former Students: How Race Works

By NEIL HENRY

   

   Jayson Blair, a young black reporter, recently resigned from his job at The New York Times after admitting to systematic plagiarism and fabrication over the course of his four-year career there. In the wake of the scandal, I sent a version of the following e-mail message to my black former students currently working as reporters and editors at the Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers around the country.

 

  Dear [friends]:

 

  I don't know much more about the Jayson Blair scandal beyond what the Times painstakingly pointed out in its front-page examination, but I do know how American institutions often work, especially when it comes to race. If the past is any guide, it's fair to predict that you and your African-American peers at the Times and other papers will be under increasingly sharp scrutiny in coming weeks and months, just as my black peers and I were at The Washington Post in the wake of the Janet Cooke scandal in 1981. My advice is to get ready for it, emotionally, as best you can.

 

  Cooke, you'll recall, was the young black reporter (she was 26, Blair is 27) who admitted to fabricating an article about an 8-year-old heroin addict. Cooke was fired, and the Post returned the Pulitzer Prize she had won for the article. Those were incredibly tough and traumatic times for many of us to cope with -- not just the shock, sadness, and

sense of betrayal sparked by the incident itself, but also the air of racial mistrust and paranoia that rapidly spread in the workplace like a disease in its immediate aftermath.

 

  Indeed, the toughest part of the Cooke disgrace was dealing with the suddenly sharpened skepticism and questioning attitudes directed our way by a few white peers and editors about our skill, our abilities, our credibility, our trustworthiness, even our right to work there. Bitter and jealous that an "undeserving" young black woman like Cooke had taken the job of a more "competent" white, they blamed affirmative action for opening the Post's door to Cooke and other black reporters in the first place.

 

  Aha! a few white journalists seemed to say, by mood as well as furtive whisper: See what happens when you give them a chance?

 

  Nearly a quarter century later, your era is a bit different.  For one thing, there are more of you working in your institutions now than in 1981. There are more African-Americans in positions of authority, as well. In many ways that progress represents an important milestone in the history of the American press, which first recognized a critical need to grant greater opportunities to minorities and women after the social tumult of the 1960s, when the country's white newsrooms did a generally poor job covering the era's seminal events. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders prodded the white press as far back as 1968 to make these urgent reforms in hiring, saying American race relations and our very democracy depended on it.

 

  But despite such progress it's also plain that racism has a way of adapting from one era to another and poisoning people just as powerfully as it ever has.

 

  In the days ahead you will run into a few narrow-minded, race-obsessed co-workers who will feel suddenly emboldened to question your motives, reporting, writing, sourcing – your very right to hold your jobs. Already the conservative right is pointing to the Blair incident as emblematic of what it considers the wrong-sighted diversity culture, one in which a young black journalist was unfairly coddled and promoted over more deserving (and "trustworthy") whites, to the very detriment of the public's right to know. We're starting to read this nonsense in editorial pages, and the heartland is hearing it on right-wing television and radio programs as well.

 

  Few seem yet willing to point out that the Blair experience, while painful and infuriating, is no more than an anomaly. It has nothing to do with race or diversity efforts at all. It's the singular story of an emotionally troubled human being who crumbled under the very corporate pressure you guys courageously contend with, indeed flourish in, each day. The system at the Times did not catch on until too late. This human being was very young, and he happened to be black.

 

  Sadly, it's the last fact that some whites will find the most telling. Black. And in the process they will conveniently ignore the far more important and stirring reality that legions of African-American journalists around the nation --  hired through similar diversity policies – are performing at the top of their game with excellence, distinction, and tireless dedication and zeal.

 

  I don't need to list names. You guys know who you are. You're covering every beat imaginable, from city hall to the White House, from Wall Street and film and sports to the war and reconstruction in Iraq. But the public generally does not know that, any more than the public knew "Jayson Blair" was the byline of a black journalist before the scandal hit. (It's curious, too, that little mention is made of the fact that it was another journalist trained under a minority-hiring program -- a Latina and your fellow Berkeley alumna, Macarena Hernandez, at the San Antonio Express-News – who finally alerted the Times to Blair's fraud after he plagiarized her terrific reporting.)

 

  But that's racism at work, isn't it? It nests and festers amid such willful ignorance, and is now set to follow its pernicious path in the months ahead in your newsrooms.

 

  It's a truism among black people that we have to strive to be 10 times better than the average white person in society just to catch an even break. You will feel this sense of pressure even more intensely now. Your every mistake will be magnified, your every step scrutinized, especially if you are young, smart, and ambitious. Some whites will, almost by some atavistic impulse, look upon you and your skin color now and see nothing but Jayson Blair, just as some white co-workers looked at me, Michele McQueen, Gwen Ifill,

Courtland Milloy, Juan Williams, and others back in 1981, and suddenly saw little else but Janet Cooke.

 

  Amid such pressure you may even end up doubting yourselves.  You're only human, but fight that stuff as best you can. No matter what happens, weather the storm and take

solace in all those who believe in you, no matter their color. That includes an old teacher like me who sympathizes across the generational divide.

 

  There was a time back in 1982 when I seriously considered homicide, did I tell you? This is what happened: A white editor pulled me aside one day several months after Janet Cooke's firing and asked me if a feature story I had written was true. It took me a minute to figure out what the devil the guy was driving at, and when I did I felt myself about ready to explode. I really came this close to grabbing him around his flabby throat and banging his head against the wall. But I didn't. All I could do was take a deep breath, choke back the rage, and answer that yes indeed, I had been to an illegal cockfight in rural Maryland. I told him I'd spent days digging into the story, was proud that I had gotten it, and that the article was quite true in every vivid detail. I swallowed the hostility, in other words, and the story ran on the front page.

 

  There may be similar times ahead for you. I hope not, but there may be. My advice is to try your best to keep your cool and never give anyone a reason to doubt you. Above all, remember this: You've earned your right to practice your brilliance.

 

  By the way, it's amazing the way race works. A few years ago a white reporter for The New Republic named Stephen Glass was fired after it was revealed that he systematically plagiarized and fabricated his work. As I recall, no one decried the diversity culture in which he was hired, nor cast suspicious remarks about the credibility of coddled young white journalists. Today, Glass has a novel out based on his experiences, and Hollywood is set to release a film about him.  He was featured recently on 60 Minutes. He's doing quite well, performing on the talk-show circuit now, and seems headed for riches.  I point this out for no other reason than to illuminate how American racism can be amazingly selective in its memory and lessons. Keep up the good fight, and Go Bears.

 

  Neil

 

  Neil Henry is a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Pearl's Secret: A Black Man's Search for His White Family (University of California Press, 2001). He was a staff writer for The Washington Post from 1977 to 1992.