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Journal-Isms July 13

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Ta-Nehisi Coates Gets the Only Endorsement He Wanted

Brazil Paper’s Use of Lynching Photo Stirs Debate

Former Memphis Anchor Still Outspoken as City Council Chair

Smiley, on “Face the Nation,” Blasts Trump Coverage

Local Papers Heralded Internment Camps as Job Providers

Short Takes

Ta-Nehisi Coates Gets the Only Endorsement He Wanted

Ta-Nehisi Coates, the national correspondent for the Atlantic, is becoming the go-to guy on race relations for television bookers. He has been willing near-unanimous praise for his new “Between the World and Me,” and Benjamin Wallace-Wells of New York magazine reported on Sunday that he also won the endorsement that meant more than any other.

“Late this spring, the publisher Spiegel & Grau sent out advance copies of a new book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a slim volume of 176 pages called Between the World and Me,” Wallace-Wells wrote. “ ‘Here is what I would like for you to know,’ Coates writes in the book, addressed to his 14-year-old son. ‘In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage.’

“The only endorsement he had wanted was the novelist Toni Morrison’s. Neither he nor his editor, Christopher Jackson, knew Morrison, but they managed to get the galleys into her hands. Weeks later, Morrison’s assistant sent Jackson an email with her reaction: ‘I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died,’ Morrison had written. ‘Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.’ Baldwin died 28 years ago. Jackson forwarded the note to Coates, who sent back a one-word email: ‘Man.’ “

Wallace-Wells continued, “Morrison’s words were an anointing. They were also a weight. On the subject of black America, Baldwin had once been a compass — ‘Jimmy’s spirit,’ the poet Amiri Baraka had said, eulogizing him, ‘is the only truth which keeps us sane.’ On the last Friday in June, the day after Morrison’s endorsement was made public and then washed over Twitter, Coates sat down with me at a Morningside Heights bar and after some consideration ordered an IPA. At six-foot-four, he towers over nearly everyone he meets, and to close the physical distance he tends to turtle his neck down, making himself smaller: ‘A public persona but not a public person,’ explained his father, Paul Coates. Ta-Nehisi said he thought Morrison’s praise was essentially literary, about the echo of Baldwin’s direct and exhortative prose in his own. The week before, The New Yorker’s David Remnick had called the forthcoming book ‘extraordinary,’ and A. O. Scott of the New York Times would soon go further, calling it ‘essential, like water or air.’ The figure of the lonely radical writer is a common one. A writer who radicalizes the Establishment is more rare. ‘When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I’m always surprised,’ Coates said. ‘I don’t know if it’s my low expectations for white people or what.’ . . .”

The article also describes an exchange at the White House between Coates and President Obama, and reports, “Coates is leaving the country. In a few weeks, he’ll move to Paris with his wife and son for a year. Part of the attraction is simple pleasure. Part of it is the intellectual project of viewing state supremacy and race in another place, to discern whether America is truly exceptional or not. Part of it is the welcome exchange of one social mask for another: Because his French is not so smooth yet, he says, he is seen first as American in Paris rather than as black, and this is a relief. . . .”

Brazil Paper’s Use of Lynching Photo Stirs Debate

“The recent lynching of a 29-year-old black man by residents of São Luís on the northern coast of Brazil and the killing’s treatment in the country’s news outlets has ignited a debate on how media cover and sensationalize extreme violence,” Teresa Mioli reported Friday for the Knight Center for Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

“More broadly it launched a debate about race, crime, extrajudicial killings and impunity in the South American country.

“On July 6, residents of São Luis, the capital city of the state of Maranhão, tore off Cleidenilson Pereira da Silva’s clothes, tied him to a post and beat him to death while also throwing stones and bottles, according to news reports. He and a teenager had been accused of attempting to rob a bar. The teenager was also beaten.

“Accompanying some news reports on the killing are close-up photos of Pereira da Silva still tied to the pole with spatterings of blood surrounding him. The image has been blurred over the area of his naked body. Close by, the handcuffed teenager is laying face-down, fully clothed.

“Much of the conversation has centered around the July 8 cover of the Rio de Janeiro newspaper Extra, which is part of Globo Group, Brazil’s largest media conglomerate.

“The cover features two images stacked on top of each other.

“The first is an image of the painting ‘L’exécution de la Punition du Fouet’ (‘Execution of the Punishment of the Whip’), by Jean-Baptiste Debret, which shows a slave tied to a trunk being flogged while other men look on in a town square in the 1800s. It is one of many paintings Debret made during his visit to Brazil.

“The second image is a photo of Cleidenilsen Pereira da Silva, broken down and tied to a pole by rope. The photo is taken from behind the pole, so Cleindenilson’s face and body are mostly obscured.

“In both images, crowds stare at the men. . . .”

Former Memphis Anchor Still Outspoken as City Council Chair

“Amid a growing national outcry against what many see as public symbols of white supremacy, the state of Tennessee on Monday honored one of its most controversial and infamous native sons: Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Jessica Glenza reported for Britain’s Guardian.

“As per a 1971 state law, Tennessee’s Republican governor proclaimed 13 July Nathan Bedford Forrest Day. But a debate over how or whether to honor Forrest, a civil war cavalry general and slave trader and key figure in the founding of the Ku Klux Klan, has grown increasingly heated following the apparently racially motivated massacre of nine black Americans at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, last month.

“ ‘Today means nothing to me, it means nothing to the people in this city,’ said Myron Lowery, city council chairman in Memphis, where 63% of the city’s 653,000 residents are black. . . .”

Lowery, a councilman since 1991, might be familiar to those who know the history of black journalists.

In a 2009 profile of Lowery for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Marc Perrusquia wrote, “Lowery was prepared for a long career in education when a twist of fate brought him back to Memphis. In 1971, Dr. Hollis Price, the former president at LeMoyne who was working as urban affairs director for WMC-TV Channel 5, called Lowery and asked if he’d like to change careers. Lowery studied broadcasting that summer through a diversity program at Columbia University [a forerunner of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education] and that fall returned to Memphis as WMC’s first full-time African-American reporter.

“Two years later he became weekend anchor and in 1976 began producing ‘Minority Report,’ an urban issues program on which he interviewed celebrities such as author Alex Haley, entertainers Eartha Kitt, Prince, Rick James and the Jackson 5, as well as numbers of local newsmakers.

“Despite his success, Lowery sued the station in 1981 alleging he was paid less than white employees and that he was bypassed for promotions.

“In 1987, U.S. District Judge Odell Horton called WMC’s actions ‘reprehensible,’ and awarded Lowery $274,120. WMC planned to appeal but then settled to terms that included improved affirmative action programs at Channel 5 and 13 other radio and TV stations owned by then-parent company Scripps Howard Broadcasting.

“The six-year case included a public trial in which colleagues testified that Lowery didn’t measure up and tended to stray from news department rules. Still, Lowery has no regrets.

” ‘That settlement was beneficial to this entire community,’ Lowery said, holding a law book that cites the case as a legal precedent. ‘They’re reading about me in law schools all over the country. It’s a classic case about how not to discriminate in broadcast journalism.’ . . .”

The now-City Council chair served briefly as interim mayor. While he has mellowed some over the years, he told Perrusquia in 2009, “I am intense. I fight for that which I believe in. Yes, I am mild-mannered and meek. But if you hit me on the wrong button, I will react the way I see best fits the situation.”

Glenza continued her report Monday for the Guardian, “The council voted unanimously to begin a legal process to exhume Forrest’s remains from a city park, which until two years ago was named after the general. The city is also attempting to remove a statue of Forrest.

“ ‘It is a symbol of racism, of bigotry, and hatred — there’s no need to honor a man that massacred people at Fort Pillow, there’s no need to honor a man who received his millions of dollars and fame from being a slave-trader,’ said Lowery, speaking passionately about the need to move the general’s remains to Elmwood cemetery, where he was originally buried. . . .”

Smiley, on “Face the Nation,” Blasts Trump Coverage

Was Donald Trump’s June 16 comment that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists” accorded more respect from the news media than a comparable comment from a black presidential candidate?

Activist and broadcast figure Tavis Smiley, host of the “Tavis Smiley Show” on PBS, said yes Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“It’s not just about pushing Trump back because he’s wrong on the issue, again this is about moral conviction,” Smiley said.

“Here is a question I want to just put out here, if a black presidential candidate had used the unrepentant Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina, to bash every white male in the country the way this rich white elitist Donald Trump has used a murder in San Francisco to bash the entire undocumented worker community, would the media have [covered the] story the way they did? Would it have the legs that it’s had? I’m telling you that it’s the worst day I think — it’s bad example, rather, of our profession in the way we’ve covered this Donald Trump story this week.

“This would not have happened if anybody else had been bashing an entire community the way that Donald Trump has. The media wouldn’t have jumped on the story that way, they would have killed it.”

Smiley went on to tell Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for the Atlantic, “What we’re talking about now, Jeffrey, though, is the politics of the way that Donald has done what he’s done this week. What I’m talking about is the lack of moral consciousness on the part of those who cover this story for letting someone get away with pushing — hold on — pushing a narrative where the facts are incontrovertible. There is no link between undocumented workers and a spike in crime.

“And the fact that we’ve cover this story like it’s a real issue is asinine. . . .”

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