One of the toughest things about my AP job is leaving so much good material out of my stories. Last Sunday's story about Obama's dedication speech was no exception. Here are a few of my favorite outtakes: I spoke to Dick Gregory a few days ahead of the event. Dude was high-larious. He dispensed a lot of wisdom while steadily cracking jokes like: "Nobody in they right mind even mentioned back then--they would put you in a mental hospital if you would have thought there would be a black president this quick. Even crazier than that would be having a Martin Luther King monument on their sacred land. The Indians talk about sacred land, but they ain't got no guns to protect it. The two of them (a black president and a memorial) coming together, nobody could have dreamed that. If anybody could have known that, they would have had the ability to win the lottery every day." I asked Gregory if race would be a hard topic for Obama to avoid in his speech. He said, "He knows what he can do and what he can't do, that’s how he got to be president. We thought he always talked about (race) and then stopped. He never talked about it in a public forum. Like when Kennedy was (the first Catholic) president, how many times did he ever mention the pope? When did he say, 'I got to leave, I'm on my way to mass?'"Then he said, "What I love (about the King monument) is the Jefferson memorial is in front of him. Old Thomas Jefferson never thought there'd be a black man standing behind him, staring at him for the rest of time." Something else I wish I could have incorporated was Nikki Giovanni's poem: Finally, the couple I mentioned at the end of the story, the Coopers, had many interesting and insightful things to say. They were at the '63 March on Washington and heard King speak there. I asked them what they hoped Obama would say at the dedication. Paul Cooper said, "When King spoke, you had the feeling he was authentic, he was speaking from the heart, not merely saying things that were expedient to say. If Obama can learn anything from the lesson of MLK, it’s to do the same, to let his own voice come out. ... There are things he could say that would make people feel like he’s an authentic person. Not give the spiel du jour. People want to know that about Obama. They want to know who he is.”
After the speech, two other people I quoted used the word "authentic," or something like it. So Paul was onto something.
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Who changed the world more, Steve Jobs or Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth?
My colleague Sarah Nordgren raised this point with me yesterday, and it stopped me in my tracks. I had unconsciously accepted the status quo that exalts money, materialism and "success" above all. But what’s more important, technology or human rights? Were black people the only ones to benefit from the Civil Rights Movement, or did America as a whole? Picture America with no iAnything. Now picture it with no racial equality. Hey, I’m as deep into the Mac cult as anyone. I represent Mac to the fullest. And Jobs deserved to be remembered as a world-changer. But so does Rev. Shuttlesworth. And I fear that hardly anyone will even remember his name, let alone what he gave us. Are you listening, black people? The first black president is speaking to you. Some of you said he wasn't paying enough attention. Well, he paid plenty of attention Monday night on ... Black Entertainment Television.
(Pause to let that sink in.) BET titled the interview "The President Answers Black America." It aired at 7:30 pm Eastern, pre-empting the regularly scheduled hip-hop video show "106 & Park," BET's "flagship" program, which is a favorite of the eighth-grade set. The actual interview offered some important insights. My favorite is below; by all means read the full transcript here. (You know, just in case you weren't watching BET on Monday night.) MILLER Why not target the African-American community? Why not say then, “This is for you. This is for African-Americans?” If there was a banking crisis, then you’d target money for the banks. If there was a national disaster, you’d target your money for the National Disaster Relief. PRESIDENT OBAMA No. That’s not how America works. America works when all of us are pulling together and everybody is focused on making sure that every single person has opportunity. And so when we put forward a program like, for example, the Health Care Bill, our focus is people who don’t have health care. Now it turns out that the majority of folks who don’t have health care are also working families, and are disproportionately African-American and Latino, but that doesn’t mean that it’s only for them. There are a whole bunch of folks all across the country who need help. And we are going to help every single person who needs help. And if there are communities that are especially hard-hit, we will focus on making sure that those communities get extra help. But it doesn’t mean that we go around saying that we’re going to have a special program for whites, or we’re going to have a special program for Hispanics, or we’re going to have a special program for blacks. We’re going to make sure that we have a program that helps to raise everybody’s prospects... This quote highlights the difference between Obama and almost every other black Democrat in Washington. Last weekend, Obama spoke at the convention of the Congressional Black Caucus--which has been screaming for Obama to "do something" for black folks. Obama told the CBC to work with him to make things better. But the CBC's ideas on how to make things better are fundamentally different that Obama's. The CBC wants things like job training and money going straight from the federal government to paying salaries for new jobs. Obama believes that a rising tide lifts all boats. And he doesn't say this, but he appears to believe that advocating for one specific group is "bad politics"--which means, as I understand it, that it would cost votes. I wonder if the average white independent voter--the ones who Obama does not want to alienate with overtly racial rhetoric or policies--knows Obama's opinion on "how America works" when it comes to helping his fellow black Americans. Yesterday a few Ebonicisms caught my eye, when a Mike Vick quote was de-ghettofied and President Obama was quoted as "telling black people to stop complainin'." That missing G means a lot. So much, in fact, that the writer Karen Hunter told MSNBC that AP is racist for accurately transcribing the president: "I think it’s inherently racist to do something like that ... for them to do that in a publication, you know what that is, and I don’t think it’s acceptable on any level. I teach a journalism class, and I tell my students to fix people’s grammar, because you don’t want them to sound ignorant. For them to do that, it’s code, and I don’t like it." It's not code, Ms. Hunter. It's journalism. AP's mission is to present as accurate a picture as possible of what was said and done--not to protect people from sounding ignorant. I argued yesterday that Vick should have been quoted word-for-word when he said, "I don't get the 15-yard flags like everybody else do." (It was changed to, "like everybody else DOES.") I think that if you don't want to quote someone's bad English, just paraphrase them. But to change what's in between the quote marks is to change reality. Here's the segment with Hunter n'em. Long Live Ebonics. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy This post is for everyone who, like me, jumped on the headline this weekend in which President Obama told black people to "quit complainin.'" I urge you to read the full transcript of his speech here. The speech lasted 28 minutes and is about 3,500 words on the printed page. "Quit complainin'" was in the second-to-last sentence. Should that have been the headline? If Obama is speaking to the Black Caucus, is he really speaking to "blacks" in general, or to "black Democratic politicians"? If Mike Vick goes on TV tomorrow and says, "I need to quit complainin'," will his quote be printed with a G on the end? You be the judge.
As a Noo Yawk native and Giants fan living in Philly, I eagerly went online this morning to hear Mike Vick complain about the hit that broke his hand yesterday. I watched the ESPN video of his comments (which appears below), then read the story to see if anybody was telling him to man up and play. And I noticed that the pull quote corrected his grammar. In the video, Vick clearly says, "I don't get the 15-yard flags like everybody else do." (It's below, at the 1:58 mark.) But the written story quotes him as saying, "Like everybody else DOES." (Vick also says in the video, "Everybody seen the game," but this does not appear in the text story. And in another story, he's quoted as saying, "There's no reason for me to go into a big dissertation about why I'm not getting the calls"--so he's clearly got some vocabulary to work with.) How someone speaks says a lot about that person. I enjoy Ebonics, of all kinds. I like that Vick's inflections on this classic Ebonicism strongly underscored his frustration. I like that when he says "in general," the phrase ends with a "W" sound. This style of speech reminds me of a lot of enjoyable experiences, people and places. I think Vick should have been quoted exactly as he said it. There are only a few reasons why the quote would have been changed, and ... ain't none of them good. An interesting and unique perspective on what it will take to solve America's racial problems: He's not. Some black people might disagree, though. And I have been disturbed by a few things this nice young blond boy has said, including a remark yesterday about the brown people who work in Dunkin Donuts. It makes me question the conventional wisdom that racial bias will fade out because young people today see race differently that previous generations.
My family lives in a suburban town that's about 95% white. When we moved in four years ago, the welcome extended by our neighbors, all of them white, was extremely warm. The first day, four neighbors came by to bring cakes, pastries, a case of beer, and kind words. As time went on, they helped us navigate our new surroundings and invited us to this and that, including to become members of the private swim club (although that club is a story for another day). We do have four other black families living within a block or two of our home, although as you get deeper into the neighborhood, farther from the commercial thoroughfare and into the more expensive homes, it gets whiter. I have never heard any racial remarks or felt any hostility whatsoever. Overall, this is a nice neighborhood for my wife and I to raise our children. The only remarks I'm aware of have come from Frankie (I have changed his name). He's the same age as one of my sons, they both love sports, so they play all the time. He's a nice kid, polite, and his parents are friendly. A few months after we moved in, my son came back from his house with a funny look on his face. "Frankie said black people are bad," my son told me. Oh, word? I called Frankie's house and his mom picked up. I calmly explained my son's story to her. She was mortified. "We're not that kind of people," she said. At this point, my wife and I had a decision to make. We chose not to excommunicate Frankie from our lives. He probably didn't know any black people. Somebody had to teach him about reality. We did, however, ban our son from setting foot in Frankie's house. The months and years passed, and Frankie and my son remained friends. Not best friends, but they played together all the time. The no-Frankie's-house ban was eased slightly. During this time, my son has related two other remarks to me. One day we were discussing why so many football and basketball players are black. He said, "Frankie says black people are taking over sports." Another time, my son said he was describing a bike camp to Frankie, where they ride throughout the city, which is about 50% black. Frankie was like, "Are you crazy? You're not afraid of getting shot?" Of course I talked to my son about all these remarks, why they were off base, and what might lead his friend to make them. I advised my son that his friendship could help educate Frankie, because now he knows a black family that includes a doctor, a judge, lawyers, bankers and business owners. And I took it upon myself to wordlessly educate Frankie about black people. When he rides in our car, I play either NPR (because we don't just listen to rap) or rap (because we do like rap, not all of it is destructive, and this is what good rap sounds like). When he's at our house, I ask him to spell stuff, or to do some mental math. When we go to the hood to play basketball, I let him tag along. (But not into the *deep* hood, because his folks would be shook. Come to think of it, my wife probably doesn't want our son there either.) And Frankie never seemed fazed for a second. The kid is a super athlete, and when he's the only white kid on the court, he doesn't act scared. Not even his first time playing with us, when a big kid blocked his shot twice in a row, each time with the comment "get that shhh outta here!" Frankie just grinned and ran back on defense. Then came yesterday. On the way to school, my son and I stopped at Dunkin Donuts, and I asked him why he thought so many Southeast Asian people work there. After school, we took Frankie with us to hoop at the gym. On the way home, we passed that same Dunkin Donuts. Frankie spontaneously said something like, "They need to do something about all those Indians in Dunkin Donuts. You can't even understand what they're saying!" I'm not mad at Frankie, or at his parents. I don't want to label them racists. This is a guess, but I think Frankie's family is just living life as it comes, paying no special attention to the way society creates and promotes racial stereotypes--like fish unaware that water is wet. Frankie is just one kid, in one town, and there's no way to tell if his remarks mean anything bigger or not. But he does make me wonder about the hidden aspects of America's undeniable racial progress, and whether ignoring race, instead of educating people about it, will get us where we want to go. Of course it is. That's the conventional wisdom, anyway, among millions of Americans--that societal institutions like education, housing, and employment have baked-in barriers to black and Latino opportunity. These barriers are often described as unintentional remnants of the Jim Crow era, "deeply entrenched historical legacies ... produced through interactive networks of individuals and institutions." Recently, though, a friend of mine has been doubting this scenario. His point is that in the year 2011, opportunity is there for whoever wants it. So what, he says, if you're poor or go to a lousy school--work hard and you can succeed.
But does the poor kid stuck in a lousy school have an equal opportunity to succeed as the middle-class kid in an average school district? If not, does that disparity fit the definition of structural racism? And what data is there on structural racism in general? I had to admit that I have not looked closely at the primary evidence. I tend to believe in the concept, but I'm operating on a lifetime of absorbed statistics, logical arguments, books, articles, anecdotes, and the experiences of my friends, family, and myself. I need to examine some hard numbers. So I've decided to go on a data quest. Why bother? Well, I'd like to win the debate with my friend. If I can convince him, that's one more person who could help eliminate structural racism. I will have built a set of statistics to use in my work. Also: I believe it's important to challenge my own beliefs, because race is such a subjective subject to write about. And if I can't convince my friend, because the data shows something other than what I thought--well, then I'll have with a greater understanding of the forces affecting black and brown people in America. I will have learned something new. So let the journey begin. I'll report back along the way. Suggestions welcome--especially from sk Talking with some of my more conservative friends, I have discovered the common view that Obama is trying to "destroy America." This will happen, the thinking goes, by creating more dependency on more social welfare programs until these programs bankrupt the country. Then, they believe, Obama will be able to transition into some sort of socialist state. The other day a reporter asked Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, whether he thought Obama is trying to "destroy America." Coburn's response: "No, I don’t . . . He’s a very bright man. But think about his life. And think about what he was exposed to and what he saw in America. He’s only relating what his experience in life was. . . . His intent isn’t to destroy. It’s to create dependency because it worked so well for him. I don’t say that critically. Look at people for what they are. Don’t assume ulterior motives. I don’t think he doesn’t love our country. I think he does. As an African American male, coming through the progress of everything he experienced, he got tremendous benefit through a lot of these programs. So he believes in them. I just don’t believe they work overall and in the long run they don’t help our country. But he doesn’t know that because his life experience is something different. So it’s very important not to get mad at the man. And I understand, his philosophy — there’s nothing wrong with his philosophy other than it’s goofy and wrong [laughter] — but that doesn’t make him a bad person." This comment was called to my attention by an outraged Yale friend of mine, a black doctor. He sees Coburn looking at a successful black man and assuming that a) he achieved his station in life through affirmative action, not talent and hard work, and b) he must have been on welfare, food stamps, or some such. My friend called it a case of "these mediocre oblivious white men slip(ping) into this overtly racist thinking." The doctor emailed the quote to me and two other Yale friends. One of them, a black foundation director with a Stanford MBA, had this to say: "The GOP is simply a modern day version of the KKK. You get shouted down for saying these sorts of things, but it's true. They are white supremacists. Coburn merely reflects the unmuzzled philosophy of the GOP. Fellas, they are extremists, plain and simple. I've been complaining about Obama's approach to the GOP since Day 1, because he's approached them as if they are rational people. They are not. They are religious and cultural extremists." I'd say that comment uses a pretty broad brush. But I found it quite significant, because the person who said it, a man I have known for 25 years, is an extraordinarily intelligent, friendly, and just plain decent person, who has many white friends and colleagues. He is not one to see an anti-black conspiracy hiding behind every bush. But when he cuts to the essence of what he hears from the GOP, he hears racism. There's an enormous perception gap when it comes to what is or is not racist behavior, something we have to solve in order to move forward. Call this Exhibit 4,080. |
AuthorJesse Washington is a Senior Writer for ESPN's TheUndefeated.com Archives
January 2016
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