From Keith Woods: The 2005 Poynter “Racers,” so-named by the first “Writing About Race” group in 1996, launched a week of exploration
into the topic on Sunday night by answering this question: “What
person, event or tradition would best help others understand you a
little better?”
It’s a personal beginning because we’ve come to
approach this work with that mantra: With race and ethnicity, it’s
always personal. Always.
If all goes according to plan (which is
another way of saying nothing will go the way we’ve planned it), the
week should be a series of discoveries, each serendipitous moment
helping us get better at reporting, storytelling and just talking about
one of America’s most bedeviling issues.
This week, the group of 15 journalists and six faculty members will look for ways to do several things:
- Get to candor and honestly about race and ethnicity quicker and more effectively.
- Frame and craft stories that break new ground and plum new depths of understanding.
- Explore and use the language with precision and
purpose, avoiding the euphemisms, stereotypes and other traps that lie
in wait of journalists willing take on this tough topic.
We’ll watch and discuss the racially charged movie “Crash” and wrestle with the class and racial undertones and overtones in coverage
of Hurricane Katrina. We’ll look at award-winning journalism that deals
with race and ethnic relations. And, if form holds, the journalists
will write what are often among the most powerful essays we hear at
Poynter seminars.
Our groups tend to stay together on
listservs for years after the seminar’s done. But blogging daily while
undergoing these envelope-pushing conversations is new. It’s an
exciting proposition with all sorts of course-altering possibilities.
But after nearly two decades of working on improving the way we handle
race and ethnic matters in the media and beyond, I know only one thing
for sure: We’ll get nowhere until we take on the unavoidably painful
and profoundly simple work of sitting in a room together and talking.
