Like many journalists, I read not only for information and explanation, but also for prognostication. I want to know where we might be headed, as well as where we came from.
So when I’m reading different news sources, I save those articles that strike me as identifying or confirming what I sense might be a shift in the way we write about certain topics. In the case of the post-Hurricane Katrina coverage of racial issues, I found a number of articles that went beyond the Black/White paradigm that framed much of the journalism I read or watched, and represented different approaches to such coverage.
These articles represent a change going on in the coverage of race. And they point to issues of race and ethnicity that bear more exploring. Let me share three of them that I think illustrate different approaches to this shift.
Jerry Large, a columnist at The Seattle Times, wrote about the connection between race and class.
Jonathan Tilove, who covers race and immigration for Newhouse News Service, wrote an analysis of how Katrina resurrected images and questions raised back in the 1960s, during the civil rights era. He also showed how 1960s immigration legislation began a change that would alter the racial picture in the United States today.
And Saundra Amrhein, a reporter at Poynter’s St. Petersburg Times, examined the changing labor landscape in New Orleans, as restoration work goes to immigrants from Mexico and Central America instead of local Blacks — and the tension it has created.
I interviewed all three writers by phone about what they had written. I asked them the same four questions:
1.) What prompted you to write the piece?
2.) What do journalists need to watch for in the future when it comes to the coverage of race/ethnicity?
3.) What mistakes and missteps must we avoid as journalists?
4.) How can journalists find ways to understand and connect with the people who will be in the forefront of those communities?
Here’s what they had to say. I’ll begin with Large.
After Katrina hit, Large said he saw many people debating whether what happened to Blacks occurred primarily because of race or class. “My take was that they were so intertwined they can’t be separated,” he said. It wasn’t an issue of Bush hating Black people, as some asserted, Large said, but that he doesn’t have much concern for poor people, period. And, he added, neither did the New Orleans officials, who are Black.
What Large believes journalists must do when covering race/ethnicity issues is guard against their own ignorance. Journalists need to educate themselves and explore the complexity of the topic, he added. Find experts in a variety of fields, such as in economics, sociology and history, he said.
“Race is not something (journalists) know much about at all, but they think they do,” he emphasized. “…We tend to oversimplify what we write.”
What should journalists avoid? Stay away from the Smothers Brothers comedy routine where each brother argued about how “Mom always liked you best,” Large said. Sometimes, he added, the coverage makes it sound like arguments between Blacks and Latinos about who is liked best.
For Tilove, Katrina “offered a tighter frame” in which to view the anniversary of immigration reform and its impact on civil rights. He noted that the aftermath of Katrina served as throwback to the 1960s, when questions about “What can we do?” and “How did we get to this stage?” and “Where are these poor people coming from?” emerged.
Katrina became the vehicle that enabled Tilove to explore in real time something that’s been evolving over time in the United States when it comes to immigration and race.
But the coverage needs to go beyond the current Black-and-White, good-and-evil narrative of the Rosa Parks era, Tilove warned. While it might be easy and fair to see what Parks did as a blow against evil, as part of the Black struggle against oppression, it exists alongside a history that has seen Hispanics oppressed too, Tilove noted. When those narratives collide, it becomes harder for journalists to write about them, he said.
The mistake journalists need to avoid is “getting stuck in the story that is commanding attention at the time,” Tilove said. “The danger is to come to stories with pre-formed ideas.”
Tilove suggested sticking to what you can observe. Stay away from overstating what’s obvious and current, he advised, and keep checking yourself. Find the experts, he said, but also look for people without titles. And stay in touch with them over time, he added.
Right after Katrina hit, Amrhein sensed the shift about to happen in New Orleans. “I look at immigration, and Hispanics in other areas in the country have been coming in and doing the work that no one else is doing, back-breaking work,” Amrhein said. “I knew the immigrants would be tapped to come in and do the work (in New Orleans).”
Amrhein knew that the suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act, which meant contractors could pay below the federal minimum wage, would exacerbate tensions between Blacks and Hispanics. She had seen Hispanics work for lower wages than many people would, and she suspected Black residents in New Orleans wouldn’t want to do so. She wanted to address the tension. But she also explored the story at many different levels: the fear residents had about what would happen to them, their city, their housing, their lives. “I tried to avoid stereotypes,” she said. “I tried to find different perspectives.”
Amrhein believes journalists need to find out what drives the people they cover. In New Orleans, she wanted to find out the following about immigrnts: What’s their motivation? What brought them here? Do they plan to stay? What did they leave behind? In writing about the residents, she went beyond the name-calling and reported on the fear and frustration.
She urged journalists to avoid caricatures and to recognize the complexity of the situation. Spend more time where people live, go to school, where they shop and where they work, she added.
“It means getting out of the office,” Amrhein said. “Go into their homes. Be respectful. Try to see where they’re coming from without demonizing them or putting them on a pedestal.”
What Amrhein, Tilove and Large make clear to me — in their writing and in their comments — is that something new is emerging from something old. New cultural configurations are realigning an old Black/White paradigm. New, more nuanced reporting and writing must replace the old, conventional conflict-oriented race relations coverage.
We are reporting in a period of time that is, as C.S. Lewis once wrote in a different context, “between the already and the not yet.” That requires us to observe and report what’s happening now so we can better understand the face of things yet to come.
