How often should journalists write about race? “Every day,” says Tammy Johnson, director of strategic partnerships at the Applied Research Center (ARC) in Oakland, Calif. “How many stories?” pressed a student at Santa Clara University, where Johnson was speaking to my class. Johnson answered: “A gazillion of them.”
That may seem a little much. ARC focuses on public policy related to racial justice, so it’s not surprising that Johnson thinks race deserves ongoing attention.
But the truth is, a whole lot of stories already are about race and never mention the word. We follow beats such as criminal justice, immigration or health every day. How often do we recognize — in our minds or in our copy — that events and policies in these areas affect people unequally, often depending on their race or gender?
Unintentionally, our reporting can set up an “us” vs. “those people” dichotomy that limits audience members’ understanding of the issue at hand.
Johnson offers a couple of examples about how to move beyond this dichotomy. Take immigration. Generally we keep a close eye on raids and efforts to deport people. Sometimes we highlight the heartwarming story of someone who made it through the system and now has a house, a family and a good, steady job.
But how often do we include a clear explanation of immigration law and how it differs depending on an immigrant’s home country and his or her job? What are the opportunities for a technical engineer, compared to a farm worker, compared to an Eastern European with connections to the embassy?
Similarly, what about the economic and social effects immigrants have on their new chosen home? In this story about immigration and housing, for example, the news site NuWire Investor takes a look at the impact of strict immigration enforcement on home foreclosures and real estate prices in one Virginia county.
When it comes to criminal justice, usually we focus on the best ways to protect society from bad people. Instead, what about writing stories that take into account the dramatic skew in race and gender within the prison population? The Seattle Times recently highlighted a report on disparate sentencing for crimes in Washington State — specifically, higher fees and fines for Hispanic defendants than for white defendants.
There’s other evidence to support a story like this. According to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics, little more than three percent of the black male population was serving time at the end of 2007, compared with 1.2 percent of Hispanic men and about .4 percent of the white male population.
Digging deeper, might we investigate the policies and conditions that could contribute to the nation’s growing prison population? Is there a connection to safe neighborhoods? Access to good schools and jobs? What about stories about the availability of psychiatric diagnosis, drug treatment and mental health care?
Whatever the subject matter, Johnson calls upon journalists to question old habits and to consider the assumptions we work within. How true are they? And what role does race play as the people we cover go to school, look for a job, take care of their families and find their way home for a night’s rest? When do policies help one group of people more than others, and set up barriers for others to succeed? Maybe we do not always need to name race but, as journalists, we need to recognize its power.
