Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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A conversation on race
John Hope Franklin advises editors to advocate diversity
in their communities ‘with more vigor than they might be used to’
John Hope Franklin has lived his life along the color line. He grew
up in an all-black town in Oklahoma. As a young college teacher with a
Harvard Ph.D., he tried to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was
rejected because of his race. As the first black chairman of the history
department at Brooklyn College in the ’50s, he could not get a loan to
buy a home for his family.
He has spent more than 50 years studying the racial divide in America.
Now 83, Franklin is a professor emeritus at Duke University and one of
the nation’s most revered scholars on race. His work has greatly enlarged
the history and understanding of race in America — and he is still at it.
Last June, President Clinton named him to lead a panel charged with
conducting a national dialogue on race and making recommendations for action.
At the time, Franklin said, "I am not sure this is an honor. It may be
a burden."
But Franklin remains committed to the vision of "one America" and optimistic
that the chasm of race can be bridged.
At the ASNE convention, the scholar shared problems with the editors
in his audience. As leader of the advisory panel, he grapples with how
to get the nation engaged on race, how to enlist others in framing solutions
and how to sustain progress.
Some of the sharpest debate at the convention was over the industry’s
failure to come within striking distance of a 20-year-old goal of having
newsroom diversity match that of the nation by 2000, and what now should
be done. Editors argued about whether a proposed new goal represented a
more realistic and achievable target or the failure of commitment. (Details
on the proposal, page 21.) Franklin had no easy prescriptions. But he recalled
the nation’s history of failing to confront the problems of race.
Prompted by a question from Dorothy Gilliam, a Washington Post columnist
and the session’s moderator, he noted that the numerous recommendations
of the Kerner Commission 30 years ago had largely been "put on the shelf"
because the nation and its leadership had not "taken to heart the dire
circumstances and conditions" that led to the creation of the commission
or taken the recommendations seriously. "The result is that we have, from
that time on, stumbled greatly" and not made as much progress in any area
as the commission called for, he said.
As head of the advisory panel, Franklin said, he had learned that "we
tend to postpone things that need to be done but which are difficult or
frustrating or appear to be impossible, or tend not go along with the popular
drift. ... We tend to move along the easiest line and not to confront the
problem."
And, he added, to shift the responsibility. "People ask me, how is it
coming? I ask them, ‘How is it coming?’ People get the impression that
the advisory board ... has somehow assumed the responsibility for solving
the problem and that it has relieved the nation of the burden of confronting
or solving the problem."
Thus, he said, things appear to be better than they are, "because no
one is taking the bull by the horns or moving toward a particular goal."
Franklin offered these suggestions to editors: "They can advocate with
more vigor than they might be accustomed to for diversity in other areas
of the community. They can advocate educational opportunity. They can fix
attention on something that is certainly held in common by everyone; that
is, the aspiration to have an absolutely first-rate educational system."
Improving schools, he said, would simultaneously solve the problems of
education and race.
He called on newspapers to show "more accuracy and less distortion"
in covering matters of race, including the advisory panel, which he said
had "suffered greatly" from coverage that had focused on protests by a
handful of dissenters or that was just plain wrong. "You can advocate diversity,
not just in the (newsroom), but in other aspects of life. In addition to
self-examination, which you clearly are engaged in, there is the examination
of the community, of activities and institutions in the community, which
can achieve a great deal."
Editors can strive for diversity in their newspapers’ contents. ASNE’s
board, in its new proposed goal, said content diversity should be a core
value of journalism. Franklin called it a responsibility.
Black newspapers arose in the 1800s, and thrived for more than a century,
he said, because white newspapers largely ignored African-Americans. Later,
when the majority press began to tell the stories of blacks in America,
the black press began to shrink. "That increased the responsibility of
the white press," Franklin said, "not only to report the news fairly, but
also to assume responsibility in the area of greater diversity."
Despite the urgency of the diversity debate at the convention, Franklin
spoke to a half-empty room. One editor noted the empty chairs in asking
Franklin whether he agreed with something Martin Luther King Jr. had said
30 years ago — that apathy and complacency were partly to blame for the
failure of progress on race.
The scholar spoke again about newspapers’ responsibility to educate
their readers about the value of diversity, the need to enlist others in
the effort to eliminate racial conflict and the need to enlist other groups
in the quest to bring about one America. And he said simply: "Just keep
working on it."
Warbelow is managing editor of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman.
