Always Romani, But Never A Gypsy.

But when we’re talking about a highly professional position, I think these factors have much less impact.

I’ll send the prospectus for that beach front property to you right away.

Well, ok, I admit that in the limited time I spent searching I didn’t find any particular data on journalism, but I found a good deal of data on academia and medicine, both of which I think you would agree could as highly professional areas.

For example, this study showing that minorities tend to be promoted to tenured positions less frequently than whites

Or this similar study with similar results by different authors.

I’ll stop here because I don’t want to get caught in the spam filter, but I can get more references if you want them.

Huh. The IT workplaces I’m familiar with are super diverse. Location issues?

So do I. In nearly 20 years, I have had one African-American co-worker. And he was at the lowest possible level in IT. Programmers and operations folks are overwhelmingly male. In the last 3 years I have had 2 female supervisors, but those are the only 2 that I have ever had. I have worked on both coasts & traveled extensively around the country for work. The pattern in IT is that workers are white and male. Occasionally, you will run into pockets of (east) Indian contract workers. If you look it up, you will find that the statistics on this back up my anecdotal evidence a lot more than yours.

Also, a generation is generally accepted to be 20 years.

If we were talking about who gets promoted from cashier to assistant manager at Wal-Mart or from sewer worker to sewer inspector for the Streets and Sanitation department in the City of Chicago, I’d agree with you whole-heartedly. But when we’re talking about a highly professional position, I think these factors have much less impact. Especially in something high-visibility where “diversity” is viewed as a positive goal.

I work in information technology. I’ve had minority and female co-workers and bosses. I look around me right now and see both. I would imagine (with no personal experience, obviously) that it’s the same in the media. Heck, just watch the local and network news. Seems to me I see plenty of female and minority people on-camera and working as journalists. I do confess that’s an impression, I haven’t counted.

Forty years ago isn’t several generations. It’s two or maybe 3 (I don’t know if there’s an official measure of what a “generation” is). Heck, I think Helen Thomas has been working in the White House press corps almost that long. Taking into account the factors of education, etc., that you and I have both discussed, ask how long ago acceptably trained and experienced minority candidates for such a position started to exist. I would guess that it’s less than 40 years. Then check for how often the jobs in the White House press corps turn over. A slow turnover means that it takes a while for changes in the minority proportion of the candidates for the jobs to turn into changes in the actual holders of those jobs. Finally, look at what the actual current racial and gender breakdown of the White House press corps actually is; I have no idea, we’ve been talking hypotheticals. It may be that taking into account all those factors, it’s right about where you’d expect.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that media organizations are racist. What I do find very interesting is that the right-wing blogs all hold that the mainstream media (MSM is the accepted acronym) are hopelessly left-wing, whereas the left-wing blogs hold that they are biased towards corporate interests. It’s hard to say. There have been numerous surveys showing that some ridiculous figure like 90% of all journalists state they vote Democratic, have never served in the military, etc., etc. But that doesn’t necessarily speak to the politics, etc. of the people who make hiring decisions.

Regarding the historian who wanted to burn the posters — honestly, I didn’t think and didn’t mean to convey that she (!) advocated doing this out of ignorance but out of a deeply felt, honest emotional response to the idea of slavery and all of its disgusting associations, like posses and bounty hunters. The posters are disgusting. I’ve seen them. What I meant to convey was that, over time, historians in general have become more interested in preserving and analyzing the workaday details of historical phenomena like slavery in all of its ugly manifestations in order to get away from the narrow “great man” view of history. The reason why historical phenomena get studied, above all, is because relics exist, and relics are especially likely to exist for “great men.” Many southerners romanticized slavery — journals of slaves and evidence of runaways gives the lie to this romanticism. As do the Br’er Rabbit stories.

I’m not disagreeing with Kim or Shannon or anyone else. I have never used the term tar baby, have now placed it on my official “do not use” list along with all sorts of other terms, and generally try to be very sensitive to how slurs can figuratively cut and bleed even when used unintentionally. I just don’t want language to be so sanitized that, for instance, you can’t even listen to Br’er Rabbit stories because it includes “tar baby.” And yes, it would delight me if we could get to a place where everyone understood the origin of tar baby and understood that it wasn’t racist. We aren’t going to. I am not in favor of forcing the issue or trying to convince people that they should not be offended, or worse, intentionally offending them to prove a point.

The historians who are most interested in “relics” of African American past are Black - John Hope Franklin or Henry Louis Gates, anyone? I can’t but imagine that studying the history of Africans in America is upsetting when it’s your own history, still being worked out to this day. I feel the same way when I study some subjects related to female subjugation. I continually feel the forces pulling us back in time. But what are you going to do? Leaving it to the other guys just means, most likely, you will never have a say in the public understanding of your own history.

This is true, however, I noted in your post that the reaction to the Black historian’s desire to burn the posters was to explain how wrong he was to say that, first by an assumption that he’s not aware of their role in exposing the truth about slavery and that his perception needs correction. Did anyone ask this historian how he would teach slavery? Or is there just this assumption that he’s burning the “relics” because he’s ignorant about how important they are for *proving* slavery was a bad thing.

(I don’t know any African-Americans, conservative, liberal or in between who subscribe to the whole “slavery was good for you” argument.)

This is definitely tangential to the original point, but I hope it doesn’t get lost: where something is clearly just being used as an insult (kike, nigger, wetback), there’s no excuse for continuing to use it in polite or official discourse. But where an image or a term has both offensive and inoffensive connotations, it’s important not to let the impulse not to offend or upset get in the way of historical reality.

Well, it’s hard to believe that those slurs could be used in “polite” discourse unless we go back to the argument of how things like civil discourse and civility are defined and by whom.

So is the decision to use another term besides “tar baby” when making a point not necessarily intended to address race, with other terminology, an impulse not to offend at the expense of historical reality? My decision to do this would be based on being told that the term was offensive and a choice to substitute other language instead, not because I’m intent on disregarding historical reality.

I think somebody needs to go back and reread Shannon’s post, before they rationalize her response to this thread as being because she is liberal(which I assume was why the comment about her being a “Reagan Democrat” was made). She and her feelings gets dismissed so that someone can feel better about his attitudes on race and racism by blaming it on her politics(which have been conveniently assigned to her by someone else), a behavior she covered in her original post btw. I guess there’s nothing like having someone prove your point for you.

The discussion about how to make the criminal justice system as biased, racist, classist to Whites as it is for people of color especially African-Americans. Interesting.

Here’s one thing that might help with the death penalty. Why don’t we assign equal value to all human beings instead of using the death penalty to punish individuals, particularly people of color for killing Whites. That might be a start.

And I don’t want that on my conscience.

How do you reduce leniency and increase abuse and wrongful convictions of Whites, while ensuring whatever new police powers you give are not simply used to abuse black people even more? It looks to me like it takes directly adressing the racism in the judicial and police systems, and I so far haven’t seen you acknowledge that.

Fuck it, discussing with you why you want to live in a police state is not something I’m interested in either.

I just want to know, if you’d like to see crime punished so heavily, why don’t you turn yourself in?

Some of them are personally known to me, another group is not personally known to me but have posted pictures of themselves in various places, another group blogs and in the course of their blogging has made their racial identity known, and still others have self-identified in the comments. And, of course, I then acknowledge that maybe I’ve misidentified and invite correction; there are a few people whose racial identities have not been made public.

My guess is that representing your media organization at a White House press conference is prestigious, but it’s not allocated to a particular journalist to honor them. It’s a job, and it’s likely assigned to someone who’s got seniority and has demonstrated a high level of competence and responsibility in their profession and in high-visibility and stressful settings.

And if you think that a person’s race (gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, etc) doesn’t affect their bosses’ perception of their competence, ability to handle stress, suitability for a high-visibility situation, etc, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

So far on this thread we have one hefty passel of white people

How the heck can you know that? What characteristics do you look for in a person’s posts (apart, obviously, from self-identification) to discern someone’s race?

This seems somewhat at odds with a belief that black people are treated more unfairly by the justice system. I suppose that you could believe that similar levels of white and black guilty people are being caught and prosecuted and punished, but that, in addition innocent blacks are being caught/prosecuted punished; in that case there wouldn’t be any particular slack in the system for catching more whites.

But it was my impression that you thought white people got treated more leniently, and that white people were getting away with stuff that black people couldn’t get away with. In that scenario, simply legitimately tightening the screws on white people is going to shake out more convictions (including, presumably, at the high end of the punitive scale).

Perhaps I was mistaken about your beliefs; I’m sure you’ll straighten me out if I am.

Charles:
You’d have to describe some of the steps you’d recommend to increase the brutality and injustice of the police system that would specifically target Whites…hateful rhetoric…idiocy…Republican hack position…stupid, obscene and crass…

Charles, when you ask me to describe my position, and then inform me of all the flaws in that position and why it is vile and evil before I answer you, it leads the reasonable respondent to decide that perhaps you’ve already made up your mind in advance of the data, and that further response will simply be a waste of time. Life is short.

Dianne:
If whites aren’t interested enough in black people to know whether what their’s saying is offensive to them muchless to care…

Has anyone presented any evidence of widespread offense among blacks at Mr. Snow’s comments? Not at the use of “tar baby” as a slur - everyone acknowledges that to be offensive - at the use of “tar baby” as a reference to a folk tale about sticky situations. So far on this thread we have one hefty passel of white people complaining and (to my knowledge) one black person - all of whom are hugely liberal/left wing. I’ve seen that there’s definitely unhappiness in the left wing segment of the black blogosphere. It’s also true that most whites don’t care what people on the left think, regardless of their color; that’s not racism, it’s disregard for a particular philosophy and its adherents.

Now, it’s certainly possible that I’ve misidentified the race of the people discussing it (for example) on this thread. And I suppose it’s possible (though I doubt it) that I’ve misidentified the political strains involved; maybe Shannon is a Reagan Democrat. Have I made that misidentification?

I’m not a journalist, but I imagine that representing your newspaper/TV station/internet site/etc at a White House press conference is a fairly high honor. So if there were no racism involved, wouldn’t the room be about 15% black (ie proportional to the US population in general)?

Probably not. Depends where you think racism enters into the picture.

My guess is that representing your media organization at a White House press conference is prestigious, but it’s not allocated to a particular journalist to honor them. It’s a job, and it’s likely assigned to someone who’s got seniority and has demonstrated a high level of competence and responsibility in their profession and in high-visibility and stressful settings. Doing all that takes time, and once someone gets the job they probably don’t rotate out of it very often. I don’t know what the actual racial balance of the White House press corps, but my betting is that it will lag the racial balance of journalism students and journalists overall working for the various major media outlets because of the experience factor. There’s also the issue that there are likely a disproportionately low number of blacks entering journalism school in the first place, given that (I believe, please correct me if I’m wrong) there is a disproportionately lower fraction of blacks vs. whites entering and completing college overall. So on a straight proportionality basis, and presuming that a college degree (and especially one in journalism) is required for entry-level jobs at major media outlets, you’d expect a lower proportion of journalists would be black than in the overall population.

Now, the situation (again, that I anticipate to be true, but have no figures on) that blacks are disproportionately a lower fraction of college graduates/journalism degree holders may itself be due in part to racism, and we could all argue how that happens. But where do you go from there?

Now, media outlets could decide that racial balance in the White House press corps is a factor to include in their choice of correspondents. They could add race/ethnicity considerations when they make their choices for correspondents alongside those of experience, competence, responsibility, etc. This starts to sound like the “all else being equal, vote for a black or female political candidate” thread a while back. It sounds good in theory, but when you go to implement it you find that all else is rarely equal. At what point does a difference in race or other such status outweigh a difference in experience/competence? It’s pretty hard to quantify. Just how important is it to a given media outlet to have their White House correspondent be a non-white non-male, compared to other considerations? Why?

Partly from seeing the n-word spelled out so many times, by Whites like it’s just any other word. I guess I’ve seen it spraypainted on too many people’s homes, schools, walls and vehicles to be comfortable with that. It’s a word that on its face just causes pain.

No one has yet come up with a good reason (or any reason at all) to think of the “tar baby” element as racist. I’m at a loss to imagine how the “tar baby” story was racist in its original form … in Africa .

Well, maybe you’re at a loss because no one actually said the original forms of the stories were racist. I know the term is racist because African-Americans have told me that it is offensive to them. I didn’t need that validated by a group of all White or mostly White journalists(yeah, a sign that racism is still definitely a problem even if Whites do not see it that way) at a press conference. Hey, if any of them realize it might have been a problem, maybe some day they’ll realize the glass ceilings, doors and walls in journalism are at least as much of a problem too.

Mostly, if it is used as a noun to demean someone as it has been used in the countries that I’ve mentioned(to no avail, I guess), but the term itself is problemic for many people. It doesn’t help matters when Whites get all defensive about their choice of words being challenged and then start tossing out terms like “P.C.” and “you’re calling me this!” and “lighten up…”. After all, it’s not like there’s a litany of words in usage that demean Whites, by race. They, particularly White men just aren’t used to having language used against them in the same way and they never like being challenged on their apparent right to be the sole definer of what words mean.

Regarding the different reactions to historical “relics” of the past, White historians can view them as “relics” with a purpose of possibly exposing an inhumane practice and educating people about it because to them, it mostly is just that. Black historians may not be able to separate their feelings from them or might find it very difficult to do so, because it’s their historical experience and too often, too long they weren’t the ones allowed to define or even contribute to its depiction. Also, it can be their ancestors that are depicted on those relics, even if it’s not literally. The potential is there, in a way it will never be for Whites. Racial privilage also allows someone to judge unfairly in my opinion, a Black historian’s wish to destroy a “relic”.

How many “ex-Klansmen” has Snow defended anyway? I counted at least two–Duke(okay to reference to) and Byrd(not as okay to reference to).

… isn’t the fact that [a white supremacist] group thought [Tony Snow’s Kwaanza column] worthy of publication on their website something of note? I mean, even if he didn’t write it for that group, the fact that the group thought it was such a compelling piece tells me something about it’s racist content - overt or otherwise.

Person A writes something. Person B, a racist, likes its viewpoint on race. Therefore the content is racist, and Person A is racist? Sorry, I can’t quite stretch that far.

I followed the link and read the column. It discusses that Kwaanza, a holiday that’s supposed to celebrate African culture, has a number of inconsistencies with African culture, and does not have the long history that many people these days suppose. It also discusses the reasons and thinking of it’s developer, which is as Snow says not exactly the Hallmark mentality.

I find nothing racist in this. Stormfront might delight in this; I’m not familiar with them, but if their description as a white supremacist group is accurate I can see where they’d delight in anything that might be construed as criticizing any black authority. But that doesn’t make the column or it’s author racist.

But if I used the term in a roomful of white journalists,

If you’re in a White House press conference and all the journalists (or even 99%, ie all but one or two tokens) are white, doesn’t that suggest that racism is alive and well? I’m not a journalist, but I imagine that representing your newspaper/TV station/internet site/etc at a White House press conference is a fairly high honor. So if there were no racism involved, wouldn’t the room be about 15% black (ie proportional to the US population in general)?

I would further argue that the use of terms like “tar baby”, even or maybe especially when used in ignorance of their nastier connotations, is part of what keeps racism in the US going. If whites aren’t interested enough in black people to know whether what their’s saying is offensive to them muchless to care, how is the residual racism of the country ever going to be eradicated?