Letters to the Editor
TRenee
Published Letters: 267
-
What about local media?
[Read the article: Do national journalists agree with Gary Kamiya?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First of all, full disclosure, I am a journalist.
It seems like this discussion about the mainstream media is focused on national media rather than local media. I am curious about whether people categorize local media in the same way as they would the national press corp.
When I was a reporter in Washington, D.C, a couple of years ago, the press corp was comprised of a very small homogenous group of jaded reporters (read: old white dudes--I'm not just saying that, very few women and/or people of color are represented) who think they are part of the story when really they should be looking at themselves as outsiders.
On top of that, only journalists from big news outfits like The New York Times, Washington Post, U.S. News, etc. are given access. I worked for a small, city paper and not once was I able to get a comment from the White House--even after numerous attempts.
In fact, if you call the White House news office, most likely you'll get a voice mail, so they're in control of whether to call a reporter back. If you're a local city reporter, chances are (unless you've been around for a billion years) you're mainly speaking to state reps and congressmen (not a bad thing, just not a lot of access to national newsmakers).
I guess the point is, the national media is controlled by very few players--I think some people would be surprised at how few.
-
There are some awfully naive posts about race
[Read the article: Multiracial man]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You, know. It's not really that simple. It's easy to talk about how race doesn't matter and that we don't care whether Obama is black or white, but the truth of the matter is that it does matter. It might make it easier for white people to support Obama without having to think about race, but the very fact that so many people here in this forum don't want to talk about race (when it clearly matters) is proof that we're still obsessed.
What I don't get is why it's a bad thing that race matters. In order for our country to move past racism and start thinking about people as people rather than assuming we know people based on how they look, we have to talk about this issue-- why whites are uncomfortable with Obama acknowledging his blackness, and why blacks are uncomfortable with him acknowleding his whiteness. The fact is, he is both black and white. He is fully black and fully white--not half of anything. He can talk to both groups authentically.
It's not black people so much who are concerned with Obama's mixed-race background because we all have mixed-race backgrouds. Historically, yes because of the one-drop rule and a slave legacy, blacks have been a mixed-race community. Sometimes "whiter" even than Obama, with his one black parent and one white parent. But they were legally and socially forced to be classified as black. What blacks are concerned with is if Obama acknowledges his whiteness, will that mean he is privileging his whiteness? That he is somehow special for having the white ancestry we all have because white people are "OK" with it now unlike in the past? That he'll forego his history because in the past 30 years white people (or many, anyway) have ceased being overtly racist? This is not to negate the fact that rainbow babies don't have a perspective that is not informed by having parents of different races--of course they do.
Obama's embracing of his blackness signals, to blacks at least, that he is not privileging his whiteness, that he understands our complicated history, that having a white mother does not make him special or different than other black folk. Historically, when someone claimed whiteness, they passed for white and turned backs on the black community and their struggles. He can love, embrace and respect his white mother, grandparents, aunts and uncles and still be black. His can also do the same for his black wife and children.
With all that said, we need to move past our past. It's not just blacks who are mixed race in this country, whites are mixed as well. White and black Americans have a shared if complex history. The most politcally, progressive, mind-blowing thing that could happen would be if whites acknowledged and were proud of their blackness. To equate it with positveness as opposed to how it is negatively portrayed now. Honestly, we're all black; we just have to admit it.
And let's stop pretending like race doesn't matter. Maybe if we talked about it rather than trying to pretend it doesn't matter, it actually wouldn't matter.