Site icon journal-isms.com

A ‘Democracy’ That Silences People of Color

richard

Sound the Alarm on Trumpers’ Plans for U.S.
Strahan Becomes ‘First U.S. Journalist’ in Space
Post-Smollett Trial, Some Say Story Is Lemon’s, Too
L.A. Times Exposes Racist Police Texts
L.A. Times Drops Comic Strip Over Japanese Slur
Dawkins Wins as J-Prof Championing Diversity
‘VerySmartBrotha’ Confirms Exit From The Root
One of ’10 Best Books’ Debunks Robert E. Lee Myths
LULAC Tells Staff to Drop ‘LatinX’ Term
Number of Journalists Behind Bars Sets Record

Short Takes: Maria Ressa; Chris Wallace departure; addressing gun violence in Philadelphia; Larry Irving; Monica Kaufman Pearson; New York Times vs. Marco Rubio; Bryan Monroe scholarship; Joy Diaz; Harry Colbert, Jr.; U.S. support of independent international journalism.

Support Journal-isms

The “Great Replacement” message was resonating with Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6 during the Capitol insurrection, Barton Gellman writes. In its latest incarnation, the racist trope holds that a hidden hand (often imagined as Jewish) is encouraging the invasion of nonwhite immigrants, and the rise of nonwhite citizens, to take power from white Christian people of European stock. When white supremacists marched with torches in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, they chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” (Credit: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Shutterstock)

Sound the Alarm on Trumpers’ Plans for U.S.

The continuing attack on American democracy orchestrated by supporters of Donald Trump has racial animus as one of its motivating forces and is being underreported by the news media, according to Barton Gellman, whose Atlantic cover story about the alarming consequences of inaction is gaining traction.

“News media, frankly, could be putting a lot more attention on this,” Gellman said Thursday on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” “You’re getting some great reporting on the local election changes in places like ProPublica and The Washington Post. Nevertheless, they are not [the] sort of sustained war-footing news coverage that says democracy is under threat.”

He added, “You’re accustomed, as a mainstream journalist, to not taking sides in a political dispute and not being for or against any political party. But what we’re for as journalists is truth. And what we’re for as journalists is democracy.”

Some Black journalists are joining in the warning. Nikole Hannah-Jones, appearing on PBS’ “Washington Week” Friday and Nov. 17 on “Fresh Air,” said, “Our job as journalists is to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is, one political party doesn’t believe in democracy. One political party is actually doing things that are hurtful to democracy. And I really fear that we are not rising to the moment, not enough of us anyway.

“There certainly is excellent reporting being done. But there’s also something about a political press that largely comes from people who have not had to fight for their rights in this society, who have never had their ability to vote and exercise their franchise questioned that they sometimes, I think, report with too much faith in our institutions, or too much faith that things will work out OK.

“That’s not a luxury that Black journalists or journalists of color or journalists from other marginalized groups could ever have. We understand what the worst can be because we have, as a people, experienced that. And so we have it, I think, an innate skepticism that things will work out, that we need to pretend to have objectivity in a country where we’re seeing legislatures actively trying to take away our fundamental right as citizens, which is the franchise, which is the key to all other rights.”

Commentator Jason Johnson also sounded an alarm this week on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut.”

It’s not that the individual affronts to democracy aren’t being reported. On Thursday, James Oliphant and Nathan Layne wrote for Reuters from Griffin, Ga.: “Protesters filled the meeting room of the Spalding County Board of Elections in October, upset that the board had disallowed early voting on Sundays for the Nov. 2 municipal election. A year ago, Sunday voting had been instrumental in boosting turnout of Black voters.

“But this was an entirely different five-member board than had overseen the last election. The Democratic majority of three Black women was gone. So was the Black elections supervisor.

“Now a faction of three white Republicans controlled the board – thanks to a bill passed by the Republican-led Georgia legislature earlier this year. The Spalding board’s new chairman has endorsed former president Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on social media. . . .”

This is Gellman’s thesis: Technically, “the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.

“The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.”

Gellman writes of the Jan. 6 insurrection, “Other things being equal, insurgents were much more likely to come from a county where the white share of the population was in decline. For every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent. This was a strong link, and it held up in every state.

“Trump and some of his most vocal allies, Tucker Carlson of Fox News notably among them, had taught supporters to fear that Black and brown people were coming to replace them. According to the latest census projections, white Americans will become a minority, nationally, in 2045. The insurgents could see their majority status slipping before their eyes.”

Gellman cites polls from the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, or CPOST, directed by Robert Pape, whom he describes as “a leading scholar on the intersection of warfare and politics.”

“In the CPOST polls, only one other statement won overwhelming support among the 21 million committed insurrectionists,” Gellman wrote. “Almost two-thirds of them agreed that ‘African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.’ ”

Not all of the insurgents are white. Gellman’s description of the Jan. 6 assault includes this: “In another part of the Capitol . . . a 40-year-old businessman from Miami named Gabriel A. Garcia (pictured) turned a smartphone camera toward his face to narrate the insurrection in progress. He was a first-generation Cuban American, a retired U.S. Army captain, the owner of an aluminum-roofing company, and a member of the Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a penchant for street brawls. (In an August interview, Garcia described the Proud Boys as a drinking club with a passion for free speech.)

“In his Facebook Live video, Garcia wore a thick beard and a MAGA cap as he gripped a metal flagpole. ‘We just went ahead and stormed the Capitol. It’s about to get ugly,’ he said. He weaved his way to the front of a crowd that was pressing against outnumbered police in the Crypt, beneath the Rotunda. ‘You fucking traitors!’ he screamed in their faces. When officers detained another man who tried to break through their line, Garcia dropped his flagpole and shouted ‘Grab him!’ during a skirmish to free the detainee. ‘U.S.A.!’ he chanted. ‘Storm this shit!’

“Then, in an ominous singsong voice, Garcia called out, ‘Nancy, come out and play!’ Garcia was paraphrasing a villain in the 1979 urban-apocalypse film The Warriors. That line, in the movie, precedes a brawl with switchblades, lead pipes, and baseball bats. (Garcia, who faces six criminal charges including civil disorder, has pleaded not guilty to all counts.) . . .”

Gellman concludes, “Republican acolytes have identified the weak points in our electoral apparatus and are methodically exploiting them. They have set loose and now are driven by the animus of tens of millions of aggrieved Trump supporters who are prone to conspiracy thinking, embrace violence, and reject democratic defeat. Those supporters, Robert Pape’s ‘committed insurrectionists,’ are armed and single-minded and will know what to do the next time Trump calls upon them to act.”

The six passengers of Blue Origin’s NS-19 flight, from left: Dylan Taylor, Lane and Cameron Bess, Laura Shepard Churchley, Michael Strahan and Evan Dick. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Strahan Becomes ‘First U.S. Journalist’ in Space

“Jeff Bezos‘ rocket company, Blue Origin, sent Good Morning America host Michael Strahan, the daughter of famed astronaut Alan Shepard, and four paying customers on a supersonic joy ride to the edge of space Saturday morning,” Jackie Wattles reported for CNN.

“The group blasted off aboard Blue Origin’s suborbital space tourism rocket at 9:01 am CT from the company’s launch facilities near the rural town of Van Horn, Texas, where Bezos owns a sprawling ranch, and took a supersonic, 10-minute flight that reached more than 60 miles above the Earth’s surface before parachuting to a landing.
Strahan emerged beaming from the capsule where he was greeted by Bezos.

” ‘I wanna go back,’ he said. ‘The Gs…it’s not a face lift, it’s a face drop. I know what I’m going to look like at 85.’ “

Brian Stelter reported Friday in his “Reliable Sources” newsletter, “Kerry Flynn writes: ‘When Strahan takes his space flight on Blue Origin, he’ll be the first US journalist to go to space. Some journalists have been waiting four decades for this moment to happen. ‘I can’t think of too many other beats in what we do as journalists where we are covering something we cannot visit,’ CNN aviation analyst Miles O’Brien said…’

“Flynn continues: ‘Jackie Wattles and I teamed up on this historical look at earlier attempts to make this moment happen. FWIW my mentions were flooded Friday by people aghast we called Strahan a journalist. My view is that he qualifies. As noted in the story, he’s no [Walter] Cronkite or expert space journalist, but Strahan reports the news and soon he will share with the world what it’s like to travel to space…’ “

Post-Smollett Trial, Some Say Story Is Lemon’s, Too

“Don Lemon branded his pal Jussie Smollett a liar just hours after the actor was convicted of staging a hate crime against himself on Thursday — but the CNN host still failed to address his own role in the made-for-TV drama,” Emily Crane wrote Friday for the New York Post.

It wasn’t just the right-wing or tabloid media that inserted Lemon into the story. Black-oriented EURWeb.com and WBLS radio in New York also carried stories highlighting Lemon’s role.

“Lemon discussed the ‘Empire’ star’s guilty verdict on his show Thursday night during a brief segment with legal analyst Joey Jackson,” Crane wrote. Her story included a 2018 photo of Smollett and Lemon posing together.

She added, “ ‘… if you come into a courtroom and you take the stand, which is your right, but you fabricate and you’re caught in those lies, I think a judge really is taken aback by that,’ Jackson said (transcript).

“Lemon’s coverage of the Smollett verdict was in stark contrast to his initial reporting immediately after the news broke in 2019.

“He admitted to his CNN viewers that Smollett’s case was ‘personal’ to him because they were friends.

“Lemon also admitted in a 2019 interview with Entertainment Tonight that he had texted the actor ‘every day’ to check on his wellbeing.”

CNN has declined to comment.

More than a dozen Torrance, Calif., police officers had exchanged racist and antisemitic texts and images that were uncovered as part of a criminal investigation into two former officers. (Credit: Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

L.A. Times Exposes Racist Police Texts

“California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Wednesday his office will investigate the Torrance Police Department in the wake of a scandal that revealed more than a dozen police officers had exchanged racist text messages for years, joked about using violence against suspects and mocked the idea that internal affairs might catch them,” James Queally reported Wednesday for the Los Angeles Times.

“In an interview with The Times, Bonta said that while the texts would be at the ‘heart’ of any investigation, the probe will be broad in scope and could include policy reviews and, if necessary, criminal charges against individual officers. . . .

“The announcement came hours after The Times published an investigation revealing more than a dozen Torrance police officers had exchanged racist and antisemitic texts and images which were recently uncovered as part of a criminal investigation into two former officers. Bonta’s review, however, had been in the works before The Times story was published. . . .”

That story, also by Queally, began:

“The caption read ‘hanging with the homies‘

“The picture above it showed several Black men who had been lynched.

“Another photo asked what someone should do if their girlfriend was having an affair with a Black man. The answer, according to the caption, was to break ‘a tail light on his car so the police will stop him and shoot him.’

“Someone else sent a picture of a candy cane, a Christmas tree ornament, a star for the top of the tree and an ‘enslaved person.’

“ ‘Which one doesn’t belong?’ the caption asked.

“ ‘You don’t hang the star,’ someone wrote back. . . .”

L.A. Times Drops Comic Strip Over Japanese Slur

The Los Angeles Times dropped the comic strip “9 Chickweed Lane” after the strip used the word “Jap” in a World War II setting, but said Thursday that its decision “was based not on one offensive comic but on an evaluation of the strip overall, and more broadly an evaluation of our entire comic catalog.”

As the Japanese American publication Rafu Shimpo reported, “Written and drawn by Brooke McEldowney for over 25 years, ‘9 Chickweed Lane’ follows the women of three generations of the Burber family. In recent weeks, the strip has focused on Thorax, an elderly gentleman who also appears in McEldowney’s webcomic ‘Pibgorn.’ It’s revealed that as a young man he was a pulp fiction writer, and the panel in question is from a spy/sci-fi novel set during World War II.

“The Dec. 1 strip contained the following passage: ‘Pen emerged from the waves, her bathing suit barely clinging to her wet, pulsing substructure.

“A Jap Zero clove the sky and began strafing their little patch of peacetime. Pen drew her ray gun and blew the Zero out of the sky.

“ ‘Wow, you sure nailed that Zero!’ said Charge.

“ ’It was easy,’ she purred. ‘He was in the wrong hemisphere. He had it coming, if you get my drift.’ She raised one eyebrow and looked at him with heavy eyelids, easily twelve pounds all told.

“He got her drift. If he hadn’t gotten it, she might have floated out to sea.”

The Times’ announced Wednesday, ” ‘The 9 Chickweed Lane’ comic that we published Dec. 1 included an ethnic slur and did not meet our standards. We regret that it was published and apologize. We have decided to discontinue publication of ‘9 Chickweed Lane’ and to review all of the other syndicated comic strips we publish. The Comics pages should be a place where our readers can engage with societal issues, reflect on the human condition, and enjoy a few laughs. We intend to maintain that tradition in a way that is welcoming to all readers.”.’

In an introduction to reader reaction published Thursday, the Times’ Ed Stockly, who “handles the TV Listings and highlights for the L.A. Times and is the resident TV Skeptic,” wrote:

“We gave the decision to drop ‘9 Chickwood Lane’ from our comics pages serious thought based on responses from readers and staff. It was not a decision we took lightly. We realize the strip has a loyal following, but we also had heard from many readers complaining about the strip. Our decision was based not on one offensive comic but on an evaluation of the strip overall, and more broadly an evaluation of our entire comic catalog.

“We knew that any decision we made would be unpopular with some readers. Please know that we value your thoughts, and we hope that you’ll continue to let us know how we’re doing.”

The selection committee was impressed with Wayne Dawkins’ facility at bringing his real-world journalism experiences to his students’ benefit.

Dawkins Wins as J-Prof Championing Diversity

“The News Leaders Association (NLA) announced today that Wayne Dawkins, associate professor at the School of Global Journalism & Communication at Morgan State University, is the 2021 recipient of the Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship, awarded by the News Leaders Association,” the organization announced Friday.

“The $1,000 award, given in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage students of color in the field of journalism, will be presented at the News Leaders Awards Ceremony during its annual leadership conference, being held May 19-20, 2022 (tentatively).

“The NLA Awards are among the most prestigious in journalism and continue the long traditions of the previous ASNE [American Society of News Editors] and APME [Associated Press Managing Editors] Awards. ASNE and APME began awarding the fellowship in 2016, after a merger with the Association of Opinion Journalists (AOJ). . . .

“The selection committee was particularly impressed by Dawkins’ facility at bringing his real-world journalism experiences to his students’ benefit. ‘Funny thing is I never actually took his class, but I learned far more from him than some of my other instructors,’ wrote Austin Bogues, commentary editor at USA Today. . . .”

Dawkins will be toasted Sunday at the Journal-isms Roundtable, which starts at 1 p.m. Eastern and will be viewable on Facebook.

Damon Young, left, and D. Marcellus Wright, aka Panama Jackson, founded the Black-culture website VerySmartBrothas. (Credit: Jonathan Newton/Washington Post)

‘VerySmartBrotha’ Confirms Exit From The Root

Panama Jackson, who with Damon Young formed the “VerySmartBrothas” team that The Washington Post once described as “the blackest thing that ever happened to the Internet,” is leaving The Root. “It’s hard to leave your baby. but in this case, it’s harder to stay,” Jackson wrote Friday on Facebook. It “is literally taking away from me at this point in my life.”

Aja Hannah reported Wednesday for ThePivotFund.org that “The Root — a digital website that boasts that it provides news with a Black perspective for Black people — has lost nearly a third of its writers, journalists, popular and noted columnists, and content producers.” Hannah wrote that “the site shifted away from political news and cultural criticism to focus more on celebrity news and entertainment,” and cited sources saying that “the Very Smart Brothas column co-founded by Damon Young and Panama Jackson, will also be taking its content elsewhere.”

Jackson wrote on Facebook that “there’s an article out there circulating about the demise of The Root. i have some issues with it (neither damon nor i were interviewed for it, there are some things that are just wrong) but the spirit of it is true….theroot of old is gone, and has been for a while, but it aint just the white man’s fault. i remember it at its height and that was a glorious time, trust me. point is, the morale and feeling that you need to be a creative . . . . theroot ain’t it for me right now.”

It was unclear whether “VerySmartBrothas” will continue with other writers. The site “is effectively coming to an end. Or at least it’s coming to an end in the way that it was or lives on culturally,” Jackson wrote. “the parent company of TheRoot.com still owns the brand so technically they can do whatever they want . . .”

Vanessa K. De Luca, who became editor of The Root in April, did not respond to a request for comment.

Panama Jackson is the pen name of D. Marcellus Wright, Lavanya Ramanathan wrote for the Post in 2016.

“Wright, who has three kids ages 4 months to 7 years . . . lives in Washington and spent 13 years as a congressional staffer, also teaching a summer program at the University of Maryland aimed at encouraging minorities to enter politics. His mother is white and from France (his parents met serving in the U.S. military, and he was born when they were stationed in Panama, the source of his pen name), a fact that he recently examined as he wondered, in one post, whether she would be voting for Donald Trump.

“He promoted parties at the U Street nightclub Liv for years and prefers to write about music rather than race. With his stylishly rolled-up pants and burgundy Converse sneakers, he looks like a hipster. ‘I would be out 24/7,’ he says. ‘My kids absolutely slowed me down.’ ”

The City Council of Charlottesville, Va., voted last week to melt the city’s nearly 100-year old statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and turn it into a piece of public art. (Credit: Andrew Shurtleff/Daily Progress)

One of ’10 Best Books’ Debunks Robert E. Lee Myths

A biography that debunks myths about Confederate general Robert E. Lee is among The Wall Street Journal’s “10 Best Books of 2021” (paywall), a sign that some in the news media may be stepping up as many conservatives take steps to eradicate the country’s true racial history from schoolrooms.

The book is “Robert E. Lee: A Life,” by Allen C. Guelzo.

The Journal’s Sept. 29 review by Fergus M. Bordewich says:

“Lee always posed a significant if often scanted problem for historians: Personal virtues aside, he was by any traditional measure a traitor to his country, a man who violated the oath he took as an officer of the U.S. Army and who employed his considerable talent to wage war for a cause that [Union Commanding General Ulysses] Grant called one of ‘the worst for which a people ever fought.’ After the war, he managed to evade prosecution thanks largely to President Andrew Johnson’s disinclination to punish former Confederates.

“While noting that Lee’s conduct unarguably meets the constitutional definition of treason, Mr. Guelzo suggests that the reluctance to prosecute him reflected not only the politics of the moment but also a deeper national tradition of mercy, a habit of ‘absorbing society’s defaulters rather than marching them to the scaffold.’

“For a long time, Lee also escaped history’s verdict on his entanglement with race and slavery. His willingness to defend slavery’s cause on the battlefield was excused by his professed discomfort with the South’s ‘peculiar institution,’ though he failed to emancipate his own slaves until they had, literally, walked away on their own. During the war, Lee never ordered a massacre of black federal troops, but he didn’t punish such atrocities when they were perpetrated by other Confederate commanders. Nor did he prevent the rounding up of hundreds of blacks in Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg campaign and selling them into slavery. Writes Mr. Guelzo: ‘Indifference to slavery is not quite the same thing as its active embrace and promotion, but not by much.’

“After the war, there were Southern whites who supported the freed people’s cause, but Lee was not among them. Although he advised Southerners to acquiesce to federal authority, he refused to cooperate with Reconstruction, much less support the new rights of the freed people — in contrast to his former corps commander James Longstreet, who became an open champion of the Grant administration. . . .”

Some criticize the ‘Latinx’ label for its attempt to change a language that classifies its nouns by gender. Others call it an inclusive way to label women and LGBTQ Latinos. But many Latinos have never heard of the term, and only 3 percent of them use it, according to a Pew Research Center study. (Credit: Nathaniel Levine/Sacramento Bee)

LULAC Tells Staff to Drop ‘LatinX’ Term

“Domingo García, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization, has instructed staff and board members to drop the word ‘Latinx’ from the group’s official communications,” Suzanne Gamboa reported Thursday for NBC News.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists is one group that has continued to use the term. An October news release on its awards states, “The NAHJ Ñ Awards recognizes exemplary news coverage that brings awareness to issues affecting Hispanic, Latino & Latinx communities.” A June announcement declares, “NAHJ to induct champions of Latinx storytelling into national hall of fame.”

Gamboa reported, “García sent the directive out in an email Wednesday night, addressed to Sindy Benavides, the league’s CEO; David Cruz, its communications director; and the LULAC board.

” ‘Let’s stop using Latinx in all official communications,’ García said, adding that it’s ‘very unliked’ by almost all Latinos.

“The email included a link to a Miami Herald editorial with the headline: ‘The ‘Latinx community’ doesn’t want to be called ‘Latinx.’ Just drop it, progressives.’

” ‘The reality is there is very little to no support for its use and it’s sort of seen as something used inside the Beltway or in Ivy League tower settings, while LULAC always rep Jose and María on Main Street in the barrio and we need to make sure we talk to them the way they talk to each other,’ García said in a phone interview with NBC News. . . .”

Number of Journalists Behind Bars Sets Record

“The number of journalists worldwide who are behind bars reached a global high in 2021, according to a new report from the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, which says that 293 reporters were imprisoned as of Dec. 1 this year,” Helen Coster reported Thursday for Reuters.

“At least 24 journalists were killed because of their coverage, and 18 others died in circumstances that make it too difficult to determine whether they were targeted because of their work, the CPJ said on Thursday in its annual survey on press freedom and attacks on the media. . . .”

Short Takes

During her acceptance speech as co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway on Friday, Philippine journalist Maria Ressa said technology giants had “allowed a virus of lies to infect each of us.” (Credit: Nobel Prize/YouTube)
Support Journal-isms

To subscribe at no cost, please send an email to journal-isms+subscribe@groups.io and say who you are.

Facebook users: “Like” “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms” on Facebook.

Follow Richard Prince on Twitter @princeeditor

Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms+owner@groups.io

About Richard Prince

View previous columns (after Feb. 13, 2016).

View previous columns (before Feb. 13, 2016)

Exit mobile version