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Retorts to “You Spend Too Much Time on Race”

Race-Studies Scholars Share Their Responses to the Haters

People of Color Own 3% of Commercial TV Stations

Tamron Hall Wears Natural Hair for First Time on “Today”

Benjamin Chavis Named Interim CEO of Black-Press Group

World Cup Ratings Put Games Among Elite Sports Telecasts

Univision President Speaks Out on Child Refugees

Foreign-Language Press Thrives; Readers May Not Be Online

42% of Top Companies Link Compensation to Diversity Goals

Network News Says “Billionaire” 4 Times More Than “Poverty”

Short Takes

Teja Arboleda, founder, president and creative director of Entertaining Diversity, Inc., produced this video. He says he is African American-Native American, Filipino-Chinese and German-Danish. He grew up in Japan (14 years) and spent two years in Germany. (video)

Race-Studies Scholars Share Their Responses to the Haters

Journalists of color are often accused by their readers, viewers, listeners — and sometimes editors — of devoting too much attention to race, even when race isn’t their subject. Not surprisingly, a similar dynamic takes place in academia, but also includes white professors who think race is a topic deserving their attention.

Stacey Patton, senior enterprise reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote about the haters on Friday:

Graduate school prepares students for a range of intellectual and professional endeavors. Unfortunately, responding to scholarly insults and academic shade-throwing isn’t one of them.

“But for scholars in the fields of race and ethnic studies — including those who work outside the ivory tower — dealing with snide questions, nasty comments, and occasional name-calling is just part of the job description. Over the years, these academics have repeatedly told me that their work is uniquely misunderstood and dismissed by students, fellow faculty, and the general public. The election of Barack Obama, some say, has only made it tougher to defend ethnic studies: Amid declarations of a ‘post-racial’ America, how do you explain why you study and write about racism?

“Nearly every race-studies scholar — white professors included — can identify a phrase that drives them uniquely nuts: ‘Stop playing the race card.’ ‘What about white studies?’ ‘Racism is no longer an issue. Why are you beating a dead horse?’

“Some writers and scholars say they feel inclined to track haters down to deliver custom curse-outs. Others offer a simple ‘Kanye shrug’ and keep moving. Still others say they feel compelled to offer thoughtful responses because they view insensitive questions as teachable moments. Those who take this tactic say they are willing to hand out maps, but they refuse to be racial tour guides.

” ‘I promise you, if I had a quarter for every time some fool said, “Why do you make everything about race?” in emails or comments or letters to various publications I’ve written for in my 20-year career, several dorms full of college students would have laundry money for a year,’ says Denene Millner, an Atlanta-based journalist and editor whose work explores the intersections of parenting and race in America.

“So is there a right way to answer this kind of skepticism? I asked almost two-dozen writers and scholars to share the questions or comments they hear most often, and to offer some advice on how graduate students and junior faculty in race and ethnic studies can respond.

“Here are some highlights: . . .”

People of Color Own 3% of Commercial TV Stations

“Racial minorities owned 41 of the U.S.’s 1,386 full-power commercial TV stations in 2013, up 32% from the 31 they owned in 2011 — but only nine of those stations were owned by African Americans during 2013, down 18% from the 11 they owned two years previously, according to a study [PDF] of station ownership released by the FCC Friday,” Doug Halonen reported Friday for TVNewsCheck.

“Whites owned 1,070 full-power commercial TV stations in 2013, up 14% from the 935 they owned in 2011.

“The FCC report also found that Asians owned 19 full-power TV stations in 2013, up 73% from the 11 they owned in 2011. Hispanics or Latinos owned 42 full power TV stations in 2013, up 8% from the 39 they owned in 2011, the report said. . . .”

“Women, according to the report, owned 87 of the full-power commercial stations in 2013, down 4% from the 91 they owned in 2011.

David Honig, president of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, told TVNewsCheck that the 2013 numbers appeared similar to those from 2011. ‘This is not surprising since the FCC has refused year after year to rule on almost any of the comprehensive, race-neutral diversity proposals that have been placed before it over the last 10 years,’ Honig said. . . .”

The FCC did not name the stations.

Tamron Hall Wears Natural Hair for First Time on “Today”

Let’s face it: Tamron Hall always looks amazing,” Amy DiLuna wrote Friday for NBC-TV’s “Today” show. “So on Friday, for the first time ever, when she wore her natural hair on air, she was gorgeous as always.

” ‘It looks great,’ said Al Roker.

” ‘Every two seconds there’s a whole thing about your hair, what you’re wearing. You rock,’ said Carson Daly, referencing the chatter on #OrangeRoom.”

DiLuna posted a string of tweets from fellow journalists, including Savannah Guthrie and Gwen Ifill, and from viewers.

They followed Hall’s own tweets: “Keeping my promise this morning to the Queen of #naturalhair @CurlyNikki This morning on @TODAYshow no flat iron no heat no chemicals :)” and “I was out with @BearGrylls until midnight living in the wild. Got 4hrs of sleep simply too [tired] to blow dry and flat iron my hair.”

“Reaction in the studio and elsewhere can be summed up pretty easily: The world is loving on her look,” DiLuna wrote.

In a quick viewer survey at the end of the show, approvals using the hashtag #hairtoday, topped disapprovals using #gonetomorrow, 77 to 23.

Benjamin Chavis Named Interim CEO of Black-Press Group

Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. a global business leader, educator, and longtime civil rights activist, was elected interim president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association at the group’s annual meeting here Wednesday, NNPA Chairman Cloves Campbell has announced,” the trade association of black press publishers announced Thursday from Portland, Ore.

Chavis was a member of the Wilmington 10, activists pardoned in 2012 after being falsely convicted and imprisoned in connection with a racial disturbance in Wilmington, N.C., in 1971.

However, as Bob Geary wrote about Chavis in February for Indy Week in Durham, N.C., “he was fired as national director of the NAACP in 1994 and, after joining the Nation of Islam and serving as second-in-command to its leader, the notorious Louis Farrakhan, left that position under a cloud too. In each job, a female associate accused Chavis of sexual harassment. Chavis denied their charges, but each woman was paid — by the NAACP and NOI — to settle her claims.”

More recently, in his zeal to defend the black press, Chavis wrote a column for NNPA denouncing this columnist and Howard University Professor Clint Wilson II over a column about Wilson’s recent book, “Whither the Black Press?: Glorious Past, Uncertain Future.” Chavis falsely assumed that this columnist wrote a headline he criticized. Wilson wrote that either Chavis had not read his book or was guilty of faulty leaps in logic.

Cash Michaels, staff writer and columnist for the Wilmington (N.C.) Journal, led the press crusade to pardon the Wilmington 10 and said he had supported Chavis’ election to the NNPA position.

“Ben and i had talked about it [for] weeks, and I agreed that he could make a real difference,” Michaels told Journal-isms by email. “Keep in mind that he was already a columnist for the NNPA, and had worked in the Black Press as a teenager with the Carolina Times in Durham. After the Wilmington Ten incident, Ben wrote op-eds in the Wilmington Journal. So yes, i’m looking forward to some exciting things under Ben’s leadership, one of them being the marketing of our NNPA documentary, ‘Pardons of innocence: The Wilmington Ten.’ “

The NNPA story also said, “Chavis is president of Education Online Services Corporation (EOServe Corp.), the premier provider of online higher education for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). He is also president, CEO and Co-Founder with Russell Simmons of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), the world’s largest coalition of hip-hop artists and recording industry executives. He serves on numerous boards, including the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO).”

William Tompkins, named in 2012 to the post of NNPA president and CEO after a national search, told Journal-isms this month he had parted ways with NNPA after the board decided he was costing too much money.

Tompkins has been working since May 7 as vice president of advertising and marketing at the Philadelphia Tribune.

World Cup Ratings Put Games Among Elite Sports Telecasts

The World Cup is enjoying a surge in TV ratings thanks to excitement surrounding the U.S. team’s strong performance, putting the tournament among the elite telecasts in all of sports,” Amol Sharma, Keach Hagey and Laura Stevens wrote Friday for the Wall Street Journal. “But can soccer sustain its burst in popularity in the U.S.?

“The evidence suggests that some skepticism is in order.

“The U.S. lost 1-0 on Thursday to Germany, but still advanced to the knockout stage of the tournament, having survived this year’s Group of Death.

“The surprising run has made for captivating television. Ratings for the Germany match weren’t available on Thursday, but it is clear already that this year’s telecasts are setting records. The U.S. match versus Portugal on Sunday wasn’t just the highest-rated soccer game ever in the U.S. The combined viewership of the game was 24.7 million between ESPN and Univision, making it the most-viewed sporting event of the year so far, excluding American football, a perennial ratings juggernaut. . . .”

Univision President Speaks Out on Child Refugees

Randy Falco, president of Spanish-language net Univision, is calling on the U.S. government to get private and public groups together to help address the humanitarian crisis of Central American children — reportedly thousands — seeking refuge in the U.S., saying the government treatment of the issue and the refugees ‘does not represent our America,’ ” John Eggerton reported Friday for Multichannel News.

“Falco did not say what Univision’s role in the public/private partnership could be, but a source on background said that could include both PSAs [public service announcements] and help coordinating with the Red Cross and others to get information to families about how to connect with their loved ones, as the media would do with a natural disaster. . . .”

42% of Top Companies Link Compensation to Diversity Goals

It’s official. White men dominate Silicon Valley,” Thomas Lee wrote Friday for the San Francisco Chronicle.

“While that’s not exactly revelatory, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn all recently issued reports that say they need more women and minorities in the workforce.

” ‘Our intent was to start a dialogue in the industry,’ Prasad Setty, Google’s vice president of people analytics and compensation, recently told me at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in San Francisco. ‘We can’t do this alone. How do we get a girl in middle school interested in coding?’

“Shortly after our conversation, the company said it will donate $50 million to encourage women to pursue the field.

“That might sound like a significant commitment, but if these tech giants really care about employees’ gender and race (and by calling attention to their own shortcomings, I assume they do), then they should put real skin in the game by linking executive compensation to diversity goals. . . .”

Lee also wrote, “Linking pay to diversity is not as audacious as it sounds. Verizon, Dell, Coca-Cola and Kraft base top managers’ pay on diversity initiatives, as do several hospitals and nonprofits. According to a report last year by Calvert Investments, 42 percent of the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 100 index link executive compensation to diversity goals. . . .”

As noted earlier in this column, tying compensation to progress on diversity goals was a strategy successfully used by the late Al Neuharth, CEO of the Gannett Co., and supported by Gary Knell, former CEO and president of NPR.

However, Jarl Mohn, a veteran media executive and investor who is NPR’s incoming leader, disagreed with the idea. “I’m doing this job not for the money. I haven’t made this little money for 25 or 30 years,” he told Journal-isms last month. Money “is not why people work there. I don’t think people are [incentivized] to change their behavior for money.”

Network News Says “Billionaire” 4 Times More Than “Poverty”

Poverty continues to be a pressing social problem — but it’s hardly mentioned on the network newscasts, according to a new study,” the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting said Thursday.

“The study looks at ABC World News, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News for a 14-month period (1/1/13-2/28/14) in the wake of the 2012 elections. FAIR examined stories in the Nexis news database that included and discussed the terms ‘poverty,’ ‘low income,’ ‘food stamps,’ ‘welfare’ or ‘homeless.’

“According to the study:

The June 1 FAIR report noted, “There are 482 billionaires in the US, compared to nearly 50 million living in poverty, according to Census standards, which some scholars say greatly undercount the poor . . .”

Short Takes

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