Maynard Institute archives

Latinos Applaud NBCU’s Trump Dump

by richard0611

Company Drops Miss Universe, Miss USA After Protests

A Nashville Editor Tells Readers of His Same-Sex Wedding

Johnny and Jamal? This Jamaal Defies the Code

Why Some Southern Blacks Don’t Mind Confederate Flag

. . . Didn’t Talk “Heritage” When Black Areas Were Razed

Pulitzers’ Centennial to Honor Civil Rights Coverage

HuffPost Starts “Black Health Matters” Initiative

Bonnie Red Elk Championed Free Press in Indian Country

Bankole Thompson Leaves Michigan Chronicle in Dispute

Opinion Editor Tracks Down Story of N.Y.’s First Black Cop

Short Takes

Company Drops Miss Universe, Miss USA After Protests

“Today, hundreds of thousands of Latinos and non-Latinos cheer NBC Universal and its parent company Comcast for severing their relationship with Donald Trump for his bigoted, racist, anti-Latino rant,” the National Hispanic Media Coalition said on Monday.

“NBC Universal/Comcast, to its credit, moved to disassociate itself from a man who has either failed to realize or to accept that hate speech against any and all communities will no longer be tolerated.

“NHMC applauds NBC Universal/Comcast for joining Univision and the two MC’s of the Miss U.S.A. Pageant, Roselyn Sanchez and Cristian de la Fuente, for braving Trump’s threats of [lawsuits] and taking huge monetary losses for their actions rather than continue their relationships with a bigot.

“This morning NBC Universal announced that it would not air the Miss U.S.A. nor the Miss Universe pageants, both of which Trump produces. NBC Universal also stated that Trump will no longer host The Apprentice, which has been airing successfully on NBC for over ten years.

“This announcement comes on the heels of a Friday meeting between NHMC’s President and CEO, Alex Nogales, NBC Entertainment Chairman, Bob Greenblatt, and NBC Entertainment President, Jennifer Salke.

“At the meeting, Nogales insisted that NBC Universal sever all ties with Trump, noting mounting grassroots pressure from the Latino community, as well as organized efforts from the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda’s Media Committee, which NHMC’s Jessica J. Gonzalez co-chairs along with Felix Sanchez of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts. The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda is a coalition of thirty-nine of the nation’s most prominent Latino advocacy organizations. . . .”

A Nashville Editor Tells Readers of His Same-Sex Wedding

“Rarely do I write columns about my personal life, but at the invitation and encouragement of fellow editorial board members, I decided to write this about Darren’s and my journey, and the challenges of being ‘married’ before bans on same-sex marriage were overturned,” David Plazas, opinion engagement editor at the Tennessean in Nashville, wrote to Facebook friends on Friday.

“There is no longer an asterisk on our marriage, following today’s Supreme Court ruling.”

Plazas, 38, who joined the Tennessean in October to lead its editorial page, included two photos of himself and his husband, Darren Bradford, in his piece. He began:

“We have been together for nearly 11 years now. Until Friday’s ruling, 37 out of 50 states allowed same-sex marriages. However, the others, including Tennessee, did not.

“Friday’s Supreme Court decision on marriage means the remaining states’ bans are overturned, all states must grant same-sex marriage licenses and all states must recognize same-sex marriages from other states. . . .”

Plazas also wrote:

“The Supreme Court’s ruling is an affirmation of our personhood and a rejection of second-class citizenship status.

“Even though we filed our taxes jointly for the first time this year, we still had concerns revolving around property, inheritance and visitation rights.

“The court’s ruling has assuaged those concerns.

“Now, it’s up to us to continue working on the commitment.

“Marriage is hard work.”

Plazas has been a student project mentor and leader for Unity: Journalists for Diversity and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, a member of the Gannett Leadership and Diversity Council and a board member of the Florida Association of News Editors. He has also written for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association and been a recruiter for the Gannett Co. at the NLGJA convention.

“I had introduced Darren as my spouse in my first column for The Tennessean last fall because I was I wanted to be open to my new community,” Plazas messaged Journal-isms on Monday.

“However, this is the first time I talked about our wedding.

“Overall, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.

“There have been some negative emails and comments, telling me I’m ‘going to hell’ and ‘going to get AIDS.’ However, I’ve been touched by people, both gay and straight, who have shared their stories and sent beautiful notes of support.

“I’ve been surprised there was not more vitriol, though that fact also makes me optimistic.”

Johnny and Jamal? This Jamaal Defies the Code

For many, this line resonated in President Obama’s eulogy Friday for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of nine African Americans slain June 17 in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.:

“Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don’t realize it, so that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs, but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal.”

As listeners knew, “Johnny” was code for white and “Jamal” for black.

“People make a lot of assumptions based on a name alone,” the staff at NPR declared in a May report. They were continuing a series of conversations from the Race Project, in which thousands of people have submitted their thoughts on race in six words.

“Jamaal Allan, a high school teacher in Des Moines, Iowa, should know,” the staff wrote. “To the surprise of many who have only seen his name, Allan is white. And that’s taken him on a lifelong odyssey of racial encounters.

“Those experiences prompted him to share his six words with The Race Card Project: ‘My name is Jamaal … I’m white.’ 

“Allan grew up in southern Oregon, in a house on 18 acres with a commune on one side and a llama ranch on the other.

“The origins of his name weren’t that remarkable, Allan tells NPR Special Correspondent Michele Norris.

” ‘My parents decided they wanted less traditional names for their children. … My dad was a Los Angeles Lakers fan and they had had a player named Jamaal Wilkes, and that name kind of came up,’ he says.

“His mother — who was pregnant with Allan’s sister at the time — fell in love with the sound of the name. Their parents named his sister Madera, and they named their son Jamaal — ‘just to spice things up a bit, I guess,’ he says.”

The story continued, ‘When he goes out in Des Moines for drinks with friends who are black, the waitress or bartender often hands his debit card to someone else — someone black.’ . . .”

Why Some Southern Blacks Don’t Mind Confederate Flag

A widely circulated photograph of Dylann Roof, the avowed white supremacist accused in the massacre of nine black members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., has prompted calls for the removal of the flag from public spaces throughout the South.

Many black Southerners have made peace with the Confederate flag and other such symbols, however, Gene Demby reported Friday for NPR’s “Code Switch.”

“For a lot of non-Southerners, the flag removals have inspired a lot of eye-rolling — what the hell took so long?,” Demby, a Philadelphian, wrote.

“But when I went to Twitter earlier this week to take people’s temperature on all this, I was surprised at the spectrum of black Southerners’ sentiments. It wasn’t that they thought the flag was kosher — no one was arguing to keep it — but they didn’t seem to think its presence was all that remarkable, either. To be sure, a few folks told me they steered clear of places that displayed the flag, that they found it extremely painful, that they were involved in efforts to remove it from their schools and community centers.

“But a lot of others were pretty much . . .  giving the flag side-eye but not much else. In fact, a few people expressed a sort of begrudging, complicated appreciation for the clear signal sent by bearers of the flag. Basically, that it lets you know where someone stands. . . .”

Demby also wrote:

“Everyone deserves to have local pride; it’s just that for a lot of black people in the South, getting to do that means having to swim in the racial messiness that comes with civic life there.

“The cultures of Southern black folks and Southern white folks have always been defined by a peculiar, complicated familiarity. That might explain why so many black folks have — by necessity — come to look on displays of the Confederate flag with something subtler than apoplexy, why Naima just rolled her eyes at the flags on her campus and moved on,” he continued, referring to a Twitter messager.

“Like a lot of black Southerners, she clearly had a lot more practice holding all of these ideas in her head at once than we Northerners do. The flag matters to her. Of course it matters. It’s just not the only thing that matters.

” ‘It’s like having a crazy family member,’ one Virginian told me on Twitter. ‘You just shrug and say, “That’s just how they are.” ‘ “

. . . Didn’t Talk “Heritage” When Black Areas Were Razed

Don’t count Michael Paul Williams among black Southerners who have made their peace with Confederate imagery. Williams is a Richmond, Va., native who has been a columnist since 1992 in the onetime capital of the Confederacy.

On Monday night, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, posted Williams’ second column on the topic in a week.

“So now we’re talking,” Williams wrote.

“Richmond is having a long-overdue conversation about the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue, part of a national debate about Confederate symbols in the aftermath of the Charleston church shootings.

“Last week, I suggested relocating the statues from Monument Avenue to a museum where they could [be] displayed and placed in a context that’s sorely lacking at the moment. Some of the response was thoughtful, even among those who disagreed. Others accused me —via email, social media and elsewhere — of being a terrorist, in league with the Taliban or ‘the biggest racist of all.’ And then they really got personal.

“It has been a century since most of those monuments went up, creating what one Facebook commenter described as a Confederate theme park in the heart of our city. For too long, we’ve largely accepted their presence without questioning the unabashed glorification of men who sought to sever the Union to preserve slavery. The [Jefferson] Davis monument, in particular, looms as a symbol of Confederate vindication rather than national unification.

“We don’t take down monuments, I’ve been told, which makes me wonder what was afoot when U.S. troops helped topple Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad. But more to the point, the ‘we don’t destroy history’ cry rings hollow in a city where so much history has already been removed with barely a trace.

“Where were these calls for historic preservation when the slave-trading history of Shockoe Bottom was buried beneath Main Street Station, Interstate 95 and other layers of development?

“Entire black neighborhoods that predated those monuments have been removed from the Richmond landscape, including Navy Hill, which was settled by German immigrants in the early 1800s and became a thriving African-American community by the turn of the 20th century. . . .”

In the Washington Post on Friday, Sally Jenkins also took another turn at the subject. In her follow-up, she decried vandalism of Confederate statues, then went on to quote a Union general on the intent behind them:

“In 1868, Union general George H. Thomas described better than any modern commentator why the retelling of the Civil War became so contested and how a symbol of racist tyranny like the Confederate battle flag could be romanticized and tolerated at statehouses in the first place:

” ‘The greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty . . . suffered violence and wrong when the effort for Southern independence failed,’ he wrote. ‘This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand-in-hand with the defenders of the Government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains.’ . . .”

Pulitzers’ Centennial to Honor Civil Rights Coverage

In honor of the 100-year anniversary of the Pulitzer Prizes, “the Pulitzer Prize Board has selected the Poynter Institute to conduct a two-day event aimed at highlighting the historical achievements of journalists and others who produced Pulitzer Prize-winning work in the service of civil rights, social equality and democracy,” Poynter announced on Monday.

” ‘The Voices of Social Justice and Equality’ will be the first of four signature events commissioned by the Pulitzer Prizes in honor of its Centennial. Prominent writers, political figures and entertainers will travel to St. Petersburg, Florida, to take part in the celebration, which will be led by Roy Peter Clark, Poynter’s vice president and senior scholar. The other three marquee events will be hosted by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the Dallas Morning News. . . .”

The news release also said, “The main event will take place at the Palladium Theater on the evening of Thursday, March 31, 2016. Through photography, fine arts, live music and dance performances, the work of civil rights era Pulitzer Prize winners will be showcased.

“The following day, Friday, April 1, 2016, Poynter teachers and invited experts will lead a series of workshops designed to enlighten and inspire the next generation of Pulitzer winners. . . .”

Bonnie Red Elk Championed Free Press in Indian Country

Bonnie Clincher Red Elk, a founding member of the Native American Journalists Association “and a true champion for freedom of the press in Indian Country,” died Sunday in a nursing home in Wolf Point, Mont., NAJA President Mary Hudetz reported Monday. Red Elk was 63.

Red Elk, a member of the Fort Peck Tribes and a Poplar, Mont., resident, died after “never fully recovering from a stroke she suffered eight months ago, according to NAJA member Rich Peterson, who worked with her at the Fort Peck Journal.

“She was the founding editor of the Journal, a small weekly newspaper out of Poplar launched in 2006. Its founding came after the then-tribal chairman forced her from her editing post at the Fort Peck Tribes’ government newspaper, the Wotanin Wowapi.

“At the time of her firing, she had been pressing for answers on spending of tribal money for the elected official’s purported personal travel to Florida.

“For her tenacity and unwavering commitment to holding her tribal government accountable, she was honored that same year with NAJA’s Wassaja Award, which is given in recognition of journalists’ and publications’ dedication to continuing to report the news in the face of challenge and even threat.. . .”

Bankole Thompson Leaves Michigan Chronicle in Dispute

“Bankole Thompson, one of the leading voices on racial and political issues in Detroit, has resigned as senior editor of the Michigan Chronicle following a lingering dispute with the controversial publisher, Hiram Jackson,” Steve Neavling reported Thursday for the Motor City Muckracker.

“Until his resignation Wednesday, Thompson was the beloved face of the newspaper, which serves predominately African American readers. He has earned a reputation as an objective, fair and courageous journalist who challenged metro Detroiters to talk openly about race, community and disenfranchisement. He’s often a guest on local and national media shows for his perspective on politics, community and equality.

“In a candid letter of resignation, Thompson criticized Jackson for ‘questionable business deals’ and other scandals that distracted from the newspaper’s mission.

“When you and Real Times Media came under heavy media scrutiny because of the Pension Fund deals during the Kwame Kilpatrick era and the corruption investigations, I endured great pains to maintain journalistic integrity, serving as editor of a paper whose parent company borrowed money from the city’s Pension Fund,” Thompson wrote in the resignation letter.

“It was indeed difficult for me to do my job as editor when the publisher was in the headlines regarding questionable business deals.. . .”

Opinion Editor Tracks Down Story of N.Y.’s First Black Cop

“It is odd that Samuel J. Battle, the first black officer in the New York Police Department, is not a larger part of our city’s lore,” Mosi Secret wrote Friday for the New York Times.

“He was a giant man — 6-foot-3 and nearly 300 pounds — who more than 100 years ago led the integration of the department, then essentially an Irish-American enclave.

“Mr. Battle’s arc from humble Southern roots through racist barriers in New York would be a familiar story, like the stories of other black pioneers. But he was largely forgotten until a veteran New York journalist followed a trail that led to a remarkable discovery.

“On a summer day in 2009, Arthur Browne, a broad and thick-handed man himself with closely cut silver hair, was reading his newspaper when he came across an article that surprised him. The city was naming a Harlem intersection after Mr. Battle, whom the article called ‘the Jackie Robinson of the N.Y.P.D.’ Mr. Browne, who had expertly covered the city in one way or another for 40 years, realized that he had never thought about how the Police Department was first integrated.

” ‘It struck me as a lapse because there was so much controversy through the years about the Police Department’s relationship with the black community, and over the number of African-Americans on the force,’ he said recently in his office at The Daily News, where he is now the editorial page editor. ‘It just struck me that I never thought about how it all began.’ So he started digging. . . .”

Short Takes

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