Last Updated: September 23, 1999
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Diversity
I brought back two lessons from our weekend discussing how to cover
race and diversity. One, get past the obvious. Two, don’t ignore the obvious.
See, no one said this was easy. In fact, as our discussions and our
examination of the good work presented made clear, this is extremely hard.
We all, of course, are experts on the subject of race, but the smartest
among us also admitted to feeling slightly incompetent in tackling an issue
of such emotion and complexity.
The work we examined touched on familiar issues — the reaction of a
town where immigrants have become a visible and powerful presence; an interracial
child and her parents; the number of incarcerated black men. All of those
stories “got past the obvious” because of months of reporting, a dogged
pursuit of answers to the tough questions and editors’ commitment both
to the projects and to the idea that “good” stories could be great. Here’s
one smart thing I remember hearing: that readers know more about these
subjects than we give them credit for, and we need to take our reporting
to a higher level.
At the same time, we were fascinated by two television pieces, one on
“black hair” and the other on African-American women’s — and black men’s
— views of the female form. Someone referred to this as sharing racial
secrets, an expression I loved. What else do we not know about each other?
How can we “see” these topics as stories, and present them in compelling
ways?
Here’s something else I brought back: Talk, talk, talk. It was only
after we got over our fears — of being labeled hypersensitive if one is
a minority, of being labeled racist if white — that our discussions and
debate became deep and provocative. It is impossible for us all to see
things the same way, our experiences and backgrounds and stations in life
are too different. The same, of course, is true of our readers. So we have
to talk about it. Not only in a conference room at Columbia, but in our
newsrooms.
Barnes is metropolitan editor of The Washington Post.
