The Audacity of Whiteness: Framing Barack Obama
"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.
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Fred Armisen, who plays Barack Obama on SNL, is not "white", at least not if Obama is "black". Armisen's mother is Venezuelan and his father is half-Japanese half-German, making Armisen half-Hispa
To those of you who have never read Ms. Nelson's "Volunteer Slavery" - treat yourself if you have the funds to do so. We're two different people, but reading so many of her experiences was like looking into a mirror - finally. This article is yet another insightful and, hopefully, thought-provoking piece of writing from the mind of Jill Nelson. I am grateful for it and for her.
I do have one question, though: isn't President Obama himself an integral part of the decision-making process that creates his image, that defines his audience and that determines how one is presented to the other?
If it's 'bad form' to mention race, and what a joke 'post-racial' is, please, let's all be as rude as we can be. Honest dialog about racial issues in the present can only help, but getting to set the agenda in the media as we know it is the problem.
The 'mainstream media' presents almost no helpful information to people.
I shudder every time someone tells me, "I really keep up with the news, I watch it every night." I just tell them, if you get your news from TV, you aren't getting it.
All of us goodhearted folks who are to the left of Obama but still admire him should focus all our fighting spirit left over from the Bush disaster - that is, what we're not putting into getting them jailed - into working over these corporations that have hijacked the public (that means 'our') airwaves. The power of corporate media ownership counters all that's best in this country.
It cheapens everything it touches, and certainly not because it's 'liberal' - we know it's not liberal. Because it is COMMERCIAL.
Thank you and so true. It breaks my heart to see Gibbs press briefing with only 1 AA in the room and never really be call on. Plus, why is it that that white lady gets the first question with Gibbs or with President Obama?
Thanks for your comments Jill. Conversely, I got upset when I saw CNN (Blitzer, Cooper, King, etc. especially) interviewing black commentators and Republicans for their criticisms of Barack before Nov. 4 when support for Obama was running about 90% in the black community. That was when we saw more blacks being interviewed than ever before! Black Republicans look like the new growth industry.
I very much doubt there is even 300 black journalists working in Britain at the moment. It is a crying shame even the papers that serve areas with a big population do not try and 'positively discriminate' to reflect the population they serve, the same can be said for the Muslim community. Hence countless stories about these communities are usually missed or written without decent insight.
"a Black man is president of the United States, but it takes a white man to play him on Saturday Night Live"
Barak Obama's mother was white. As a white man, I suppose that I should be offended if a black man were to play him on SNL.
what is your point??????
Obama is phenotypically black. That's all that matters in America when it comes to race. Don't be such a joke.
NPR had a great interview with Jill Nelson today. Definitely worth checking out:
http://www
Listened to the interview. Interesting to hear the host mention "post racial" as if it was a true fact.
I have never bought an Essence magazine because of it political stories and probably never will. It is a great black womans magazine. I am not sure why the editor was happy they have more access.
We really need more black journalists on TV and not those who are "want to be" members of the repub party.
Thank you for the article. I live in Baltimore, MD. Seems like the media is too busy being focused on every black criminal there is. A few years ago, white criminals were descibed only as "Male/Female" but it was ALWAYS established that black criminals were "Black Male/Female". Thankfully, that has since changed. They refer to everyone as male/female and only go into details when there is a police search.
Now I find that somehow, mysteriously, they rarely have footage a white criminals but they have about 12 different photos of the black suspect. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think it is another form of establishing white superiority.
Well when a criminal is not described as an AA or brown skinned I know it was a white criminal..
These be dark and stormy nights....
As much as I love reading this article and the content within, it also saddens me to an extent.
I hate to say it but this article would have meant more to me if oh, say David Gregory, Keith Olbermann, Bob Scheiffer, George Stephanopoulas or any one NOT of color had written it...but, unfortunately, just as we (black folks) absolutely knew that none of the three major news anchors who left over the past few years would be replaced by someone of color, we also KNEW that no white journalist would get @ to writing something like this.
Seriously, does one really think Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow and Larry King all get together and pull their hair out over this subject?
I live in Los Angeles and even the "liberal" radio station can't seem to make M-F time for a permanent host of color.
NUD's (Non-Urban
So as much as I've fretted over all the things Jill Nelson writes about...in the end it means nothing because someone like Jill Nelson had to write about it.
For maninla;
To our great shame, your comment is all too true. It is a shame that this article wasn't written by a white-american.
Whites in America continue to bring shame upon our"race". The MSM would give the impression that we are "post-racial" now, and that "we" " Americans" provided freedom to black citizens out of the goodness of our hearts, when the truth, is that every breath an African American takes was fought for and won at great cost, by the suffering, courage, wisdom and ability of African Americans themselves.
Unfortunately, the coverage of everything else is as shallow, and therefore barely true, if true at all, as its coverage of black culture. I am convinced that the MSM is a great negative force in this country, for lots of reasons; the general cheapening, by commercialism, of every human value, the deliberate manipulation of information at the behest of paid government flacks, or corporate owners,or just plain overpaid salesmen, who are also racists. So we have illegal, racist, futile wars, our soldiers conscripted by, and for, racial privilege.
Barack Obama's election shows that most americans are not as racist as the ownership class. But we are still divided by guilt, blame,lack of understanding. These are real problems, ones we can, and must work on, but the MSM sure isn't helping.
Many areas of American life are segregated by what seems like inertia. Much more access to media ownership by so-called 'minorities' would help to change that.
Very very good commentary. I heard about it on NPR's News and Notes and it peaked my interest.
I too also notice the lack of diversity on commentary and political analysis on the regular tv networks and most definitely not much on cable.tv.
This is a truly great piece.
MSNBC should reading this. They're looking to fill their 10pm slot. And though I truly love, love, love Keith Olbermann, and tolerate Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews, I don't consider that line-up to be representative of "THE POWER OF CHANGE", as their wonderul TV promos claim. People can say what they want, but a racially and ethnically diverse line-up does matter.
MSNBC can easily choose from Tamron Hall, Eugene Robinson, or even Michelle Bernard, who would be an interesting choice because she's a liberal/moderate Republican. There is no excuse.
You criticism of CNN was warranted. But you're absolutely right that they probably hire more blacks than BET. In addition, they have a richly diverse anchor pool that is incredibly appreciated. MSNBC and FOX seem content with pundits, producers, writers, and anchors that are 99% white. I expected to see it from FOX. To see it from MSNBC, however, is surprising, and incredibly disappointing. This is not about "a quota" as a hater might say, but about simple representation that looks like the country, and the world, the station is covering and commenting on.
Thanks so much for your wonderful piece Ms. Nelson. Please don't be a stranger to this site. Your last post was in 2007. I've been one of your biggest fans since your first book, so I would love to see your work on here more often.
I love how you can hear the crickets chirping in the comment section because all the apologists have NOTHING to say.
But it's sad, because this is exactly the post with the potential for earnest, critical interaction between Bl ack and Wh people. This could be where some acknowledge their own entitlements, and look to debunk some myths.
But the privileged can't be bothered with self-analysis. This is a prime example of where privilege operates to "block out" any information that does not fit perfectly into their schema.
I'm sure someone else will pop in and say, "Don't be angry" because that is the knee-jerk reaction of someone who chooses to ignore the world outside his/her bubble. They will not sit quietly and listen, nor will they challenge themselves to escape.
This, my friends, is why we will always be so very far apart.
On a serious note. I don't know about anyone else but does it seem that President Obama is getting attacked on every thing? He has done more work in two weeks (signing bills, limiting pay of executives etc) than Bush did for eight years. I knew this was going to happen. I just find it that now the media has found its tongue. Bush did absolutely nothing for 8 years and all we heard was how much a great job he does. I am getting a bit upset with all of the Obama ridicule.
Expect it. He's a Black man, the attacks will soon come fast and furious and almost entirely without reason. White privilege is never having to say "wrong" or "sorry".
There are so many negative stories about Obama on this website...
Didn't I see where OBama signed that SCHIP legislation ...the one that Bush vetoed....
I know that Obama should not be given a green light to do whatever but he seems to be getting just more than his fair share of attacks
Nommo I like your comments but STOP MAKING SENSE.....
Is that the new Hallmark card?
[Cover] Wh Privilege means never having to say you're sorry
[Inside] And since I'm a C@ucasi an that voted for Obama, I never will!
There will never be a "post racial" America because there will never be an end to racism. As long as ignorant people exist, racism will exist. We will never end it. We can only rise above. For the better part of our country's history your entire people have been kept down, as late as the 1980's there were still lynchings, and there's evidence that the crack epidemic began because the Reagan Administration along with the 1st Bush wrote off the inner cities of America because they would only hurt minorities. Evil deeds were done.
Do you still believe that WHITE people are do it not evil people? Are all white people evil? If so, why were there white people in the civil rights movement? If so, how did a black man (actually half-white, and raised by white relatives but I will concede that point) become elected in a country with a majority of white people?
Let it go. Don't do it because I say so, let go because things are changing. Things are getting better. But mainly, because that anger from the black community is directed at the wrong people. There have been nothing but white President's before now. I haven't gotten a thing. Not a white-guy bus pass, no tickets to a Patriots game, nothing. I didn't even get an e-mail about the white privilege, but let me be the first white guy to tell ya, I'm sorry....n
As so many print media go out of business, they blame everything else but the fact that their missing key demographics by lacking journalists of color.
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