Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Diversity
Unity’s family remains strong despite hurdles
By Kara Briggs
The covenants that hold the minority journalist associations together
in Unity are moving it forward to the Unity ’99 convention in Seattle
When I was 24, my Aunt Grace surprised me by saying I was her child.
My mom died when I was very young, and I thought I was past being anyone’s
family. But my aunt used a word from tribal culture to explain.
It was “covenant,” the alliance of separate parts to make them into
a single, more powerful force.
Since I became president of Unity: Journalists of Color, I have given
a lot of thought to what my aunt taught me.
The Unity partners are very much a family, bound together by a covenant.
A decade ago we adopted each other, and have since become a powerful force
for positive change in American media.
Unity is the strategic alliance of the Asian American Journalists Association,
the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association
of Hispanic Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association.
In a few short years we have become a family that shares, grows, sometimes
argues, but in the end stays together. And we have begun to use our strength
to help the news industry set goals for the future we all share.
Each of the Unity partners formed within in the last 30 years to help
our own people break into journalism. In the early years, sometimes breaking-in
felt a little like “breaking and entering” — because the doors were barred
shut.
But 30 years ago, people like Bob Maynard, the late publisher of The
Oakland (Calif.) Tribune and founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism
Education, won a seat at journalism’s table. Maynard realized he was among
a breakthrough generation of mainstream journalists of color. As The Freedom
Forum’s Felix Gutierrez put it, Maynard barely got a seat at the table
himself when he started holding out seats for the rest of us.
In the last decade, the Unity partners have taken a row of seats at
journalism’s table. Although we have different cultures and values, we
share certain concerns. We agree to advocate for education, hiring, retention,
promotion of journalists of color, and we agree to fight for fair coverage
of communities of color.
By our presence, we are changing the national media’s agenda. One sign
of our influence is that a number of mainstream professional journalists
associations have set multicultural themes for 1999, the year of our second
convention.
And ASNE, in renewing its commitment to diversify newsrooms reaffirmed
our mission, as well as its own dating back to 1978. ASNE is a member of
the extended Unity family, having established a covenant to work with us.
As the century closes, Unity’s partners are moving toward that future
through planning for the Unity ’99 convention in Seattle July 7-11.
We are planning the convention not only for our 6,000 collective members,
but also for editors, publishers and the rest of the American media. We
will offer more than 200 skills-building workshops for journalists at every
level. For the first time, we will offer sessions for editors, including
editors of small newspapers who are trying to attract young people of color,
and sessions to explain to young professionals the value of working in
small markets. In addition, we will offer the industry’s largest job fair
and sessions analyzing coverage of affirmative action, the census and new
media.
The advance report from the President’s Initiative on Race says we are
becoming a multi-cultural democracy, yet it says we don’t have a language
to talk about what we are becoming. The Unity family, through its high
points and low points, is building that vocabulary.
In the last six months, the family has engaged in the most difficult
debate of its history.
Some members questioned whether Unity should hold its convention in
Seattle, the largest city in a state in which residents voted for an initiative
that will ban consideration of race and gender in public hiring, contracting
and education.
In spite of the vote, Unity has reaffirmed its commitment to hold the
convention in Seattle to highlight the issue of affirmative action and
promote responsible coverage of the issue. And when we go to Seattle, we
will go as a family with our covenants intact.
Briggs is president of Unity and president of the Native American Journalists
Association. She is a Yakama Indian and a reporter at The Oregonian, Portland.
