The Counterpublic Papers, vol. 1, no. 22

A couple of weeks ago in a piece called The Enduring Whiteness of the American Media Howard French argued that American journalism was deeply racist pigeonholing black journalists (when they hired them) in a “race writing” roles. The data is undoubtedly right, the number of card-carrying black journalists has dropped, and it isn’t like that number was high in the first place. But Howard takes too much of a New Jim Crow/white privilege approach. What we’re dealing with now in journalism and elsewhere isn’t just 1965 “only different”. It’s another thing entirely. 

Back when I used to regularly appear on NPR for Tell Me More, I’d have two options. I could go to DC and appear in studio, or I could tape locally. DC in the summer, when I had relatively more free time was a good look. I could tape for about a half hour, then hang out in the city for a couple of hours then take the MARC back. DC in the Fall, when I had classes to teach? Not so much. So I’d tape at the Baltimore Sun. 

And it would go something like this. I’d walk to the downtown Sun building. The security guard would buzz me into the lobby. Steve Sullivan—the Sun staff person in charge of the studio—would come pick me up. We’d go through the newsroom to get to small office I taped in. I’d tape. We’d go back out through the newsroom. We’d go back down to the lobby, and then if Steve had the time he’d give me a ride to the office. 

The security guard (who’s still there by the way…every now and again I either walk past the Sun HQ and see him or I run into him on the Metro) was black. And there’d be one or maybe two black persons in the newsroom (one of them was the sports columnist—I had a conversation with him when the Detroit Lions hired Caldwell away from the Baltimore Ravens). Which meant that every time I walked through the newsroom I immediately increased the Sun’s diversity by about 50% or so. 

This story jibes perfectly with French’s account. Of all the folks in that newsroom, black people don’t even constitute ten percent of them, much less the 65% or so they represent in the city of Baltimore. And the one person that I do see there routinely? He covers the stereotypical sports beat. 

I mentioned that I used to go to the Baltimore Sun to tape for NPR? 

NPR ended up cancelling Tell Me More two years ago this August. The show (like the also-cancelled News and Notes which preceded it), sought to broaden NPR’s audience and scope by presenting news from a more multicultural perspective, and told stories no other show on NPR did, brought on guests no other NPR show would bring on. Most of the time I appeared on the show I’d appear on one of two segments, either “The Barbershop” or a segment about parenting, both featuring a racially and ideologically diverse set of folk.  Even though NPR was ostensibly “public radio” the public it envisioned was a very narrow one.

This story too in a way jibes with Howard French’s account. 

But where does the account fail?

It fails to account for stories like this.      

Every time I walked into that newsroom two realities jumped out at me. The first was that there weren’t but one or two black people. The second was that the newsroom was half empty. 

At noon. 

On a weekday.

And when I write “half empty” I don’t just mean that half of the cubicles had computers but no one to work on them, I mean half of the newsroom had nothing but cubicles. No desktops, no laptops, no chairs.

There were so few journalists at the Sun that they loaned out over half of the floor to Kevin Spacey and House of Cards. The year I stopped doing NPR, the Baltimore Sun offered buyouts to employees with at least ten years in and a number of people took them up on the offer. In offering the buyouts the Sun followed the path of dozens of other corporations who, in an effort to become “leaner and meaner” often end up reducing labor costs (while simultaneously increasing workloads on remaining workers). 

These shifts are seismic. At the moment where we need real reporting, real investigating reporting, newspapers across the country are either closing their doors permanently, merging with competitors, or moving primarily online. 

French argues that the primary problem in American journalism is racism, that when newsrooms want black folk they only want them writing black stuff. And to the extent they give high profile positions to black and brown folk they’ll only have a few black folk in these positions at one time.

Yes and no.

Maybe French’s account does explain the rise of someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates or Jelani Cobb within the ranks of The Atlantic or The New Yorker. Maybe it begins to explain why the number of black journalists remains low. But without taking into account the role political economy plays in shaping the conditions under which modern journalism functions, the best program we can hope for following French’s lead is a program that leads to a higher percentage of black journalists as the number of absolute journalists decreases. 

….

We lost Cedric Robinson, author of Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition last week. People have begun to take account of Robinson’s influence on the field of Africana Studies. Black Marxism alone represented a signal step forward for the way it combined social theory and cultural analysis in order to tell a story about a tradition under siege. But I haven’t yet seen anyone mention his years at the University of Michigan—as of today his Wikipedia entry doesn’t even acknowledge them (I’ll likely change that). And they were important if for but one reason—Robinson began his career at Michigan around the time it had begun accepting black men and women (and white women) to grad school in large enough numbers to require mentorship. These black men and women were the product of the civil rights and black power movements and were not only interested in writing about a range of phenomena related to black folk they were also interested in changing the realities for black folk at places like Michigan. Robinson took it upon himself to provide that mentorship. And when students began what would later be called BAM II, Robinson assisted them…likely losing tenure because of it.

I’m here in part, because of that. And I’ll be forever grateful.

….

One of the things I might or might not write about in the future is a recently published book collecting many of Albert Murray’s jazz and blues-related writings and interviews. I’ve been interested in Murray since I stumbled upon his work in the early nineties.  

I thought of him today. 

Earlier this morning I had a meeting at Red Emma’s, a local radical bookstore/cafe. It’s located right at the corner of North and 25th, around the block from a public housing project. While looking for the person I was supposed to be meeting a young man, holding a thick knot of cash, asks me if I have change for a hundred dollar bill. 

I tell him no. Misunderstanding, he says to me “my money’s good.” 

I chuckle. 

“It isn’t about your money and whether it’s good or not. It’s about my money. And the fact that I don’t have any, much less change for a hundred. Feel me?” 

We both laugh (I peep his gold Lil Wayne stye grill) and I give him a pound, then find the person I’m supposed to be meeting. 

A few minutes later, after a lull in the conversation, I see the brother again. A little girl no older than 4 holds his finger tightly, sipping on a cup of juice, beaded braids swinging, while he talks to her. 

At the time he wrote, Murray was one of the few writers of any race who was capable of communicating the complexity contained in that scene.     

….

Last week, OSI hosted a conversation between Bret McCabe and I last week. This Wednesday I’m having another discussion about the book at the Impact Hub in Baltimore on Wednesday at 6pm. I’m hoping, given the venue, to talk a bit about the role the notion of the “creative class” plays in Baltimore.   

See you next time.