Articles Feature

‘I May Be a White Boy, but I’m Not Stupid’

by richard03690

Biden Quip Becomes a Rorschach Test
White Reporter Fired, Called Black Mayor ‘Bruh’
Crackdown Follows Revelations on Migrant Child Labor
Lies by Fox Hosts Put Board in a Bind
Capehart Quits Washington Post Editorial Board
Bernadette Carey Smith Gets Her Obituary

Short Takes: relatives of gun victims; imperiled Standard General and Tegna merger; Bay State Banner; Ozy Media; Kelley L. Carter; phaseout of diversity leaders; multiracial “Crabgrass” strip; diversity inside nation’s largest companies; diversity in PBS prime-time films; monitoring media response to hate crimes; the “75 greatest movies by Black directors”; 20th anniversary of African American Film Critics Association; Sports Journalism Institute; Don Lemon and “CNN This Morning”; “Jussie Smollett: Anatomy of a Hoax”; Elisabeth ‘Liz’ Petr; Monica Drake;

Belva Davis; Tamron Hall; Irving Cross; Rashida Jones, W.E.B. Du Bois; NBC stations’ collaboration on Black vets; Cherokee Phoenix; Renee Washington; Time magazine’s Black journalists in the 1970s; collaboration of hyperlocal outlets in Minneapolis; fate of journalists covering Nigeria election.

Homepage photo: T-shirt company seizing on Biden’s quip

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President Biden makes his comment at 14:04 in the video. (Credit: YouTube)

Biden Quip Becomes a Rorschach Test

A good-natured quip by President Biden at a Black History Month event at the White House Monday — “I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid” — has become the latest example of the divide between the mainstream press and their right-wing counterparts.

The quip, introducing members of the “Divine Nine,” African American fraternities and sororities, drew laughs from the crowd, but was spun as “cringeworthy” in conservative media, with even the number of those laughing disputed.

Some of those outlets led their stories with the remark, while the mainstream media either left it alone or used it to add color to coverage of the event. It was the “quote of the day” item in Politico’s Playbook, rendered in context:

“ ‘From White House, Biden says ‘Black history matters,’ by AP’s Seung Min Kim: ‘He also paid tribute to the Divine Nine, the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities. [Vice President Kamala] Harris pledged one of them, Alpha Kappa Alpha, when she attended Howard University. “I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid,’” Biden said, as the crowd laughed. ‘I know where the power is.’ ”

Kim made the quip the kicker of her piece, headlined, “From White House, Biden says ‘Black history matters’.”

Marketers of hoodies, T-shirts and coffee mugs catering to the right-wing crowd rushed to put the phrase on their products.

The Alabama-based “Rick and Bubba Show” on talk radio tweeted Biden’s comment with the response: “We respectfully disagree.”

“Latest race gaffe” declared the Times of London.

Mediaite reported more of the context:

“You know, I know — I know real power when I see it: the Divine Nine. (Applause.) We’re honored to have presidents — all the presidents here tonight. I want to thank you for the — and, by the way, you know I’m not — I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid. (Laughter.) I know where the power is. I know where the po- — you think I’m joking. I learned a long time ago about the Divine Nine. (Laughter.) And that’s why I spent so much time at [historically Black] Delaware State, campaigning and organizing my campaign in Delaware.

“But all the presidents are here. I think we’re — I know — I don’t think, I know we are the first administration in history to not only ha- — and to have all the presidents here at one time, but we have a permanent officer here for the Divine Nine. (Applause.)”

After more light-hearted references to Black institutions, Biden said, “We recently hosted a screening of the movie ‘Till.’ We hosted the screening because it’s important to say from the White House for the entire country to hear: History matters. History matters. And Black history matters. . . .”

Use of the term “white boy” for adult white men might be considered turning the tables after years of Black men being called “boy” by whites. “Can be used in a derogatory manner, but not always,” wrote a reader contributing to the Urban Dictionary. “Sometimes it’s just used to call out to a white person in a non derogatory way.”

During the disco era of the 1970s, the white group Wild Cherry had a hit with “Play that Funky Music” (video), a refrain followed by “white boy.”

But Rep. Bobby Rush, D- Ill., was criticized for once describing a proposal from State Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., as “an upper- middle-class, elitist, white boy solution to a problem he knows nothing about.”

And Michael Harriot, writing in 2019 for the Root, told readers, “The second angriest I’ve ever been was when I was suspended from school because Gray Segal [‘not his real name, but close’], a boy who happened to be white, said I called him the worst, most unimaginable, racist slur ever:

“A ‘white boy.’ “

Monday was not the first time Biden has used the term to describe himself. In 2014, as vice president, he and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, hosted a Black History Month reception at the Naval Observatory, according to the pool report at the time. Then-Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson was among the guests.

“I told the president [Obama], next game, I’ve got him,” Biden said of the former NBA star, “I may be a white boy, but I can jump.”

White Reporter Fired, Called Black Mayor ‘Bruh’

“Meghan Mangrum (pictured) moved to Dallas last summer to cover education as part of the Dallas Morning News’ Education Lab,

” Tim Rogers wrote Wednesday for D Magazine. “She’d previously worked the education beat in Tennessee for six years, at the Tennessean and, before that, at the Chattanooga Times Free Press. But she’s a hockey fan from Florida.

“So on Saturday, February 11, when the Tampa Bay Lightning came to Dallas for a matinee match, Mangrum headed to the American Airlines Center for her first Stars game. A little before 1 p.m., running late for the puck drop, she saw that Mayor Eric Johnson (pictured) had criticized local media for, in his view, not fully reporting the good news about Dallas’ crime numbers dropping for the second consecutive year. The mayor opined that reporters were interested only in bad news.

“In a tweet that would change the trajectory of her career, Mangrum wrote the following: ‘Bruh, national news is always going to chase the trend. Cultivate relationships with quality local news partnerships.’

“ ‘He was going after local media for their coverage of crime,’ Mangrum tells me two weeks later, ‘and I saw some of my colleagues responding to him, tweeting out stories the Dallas Morning News has done, saying, ‘Hey, Mr. Mayor, you know this isn’t quite fair.’

“Mangrum adds, ‘Standing up for my colleagues and the work that we do, when I know we’re doing good and honest work, is something I pride myself on and something that I look for in my colleagues and in my workplace as well.’

“That’s not the way her workplace saw it. Three days after she sent that tweet, she was fired for addressing the mayor as ‘bruh.’

“The Lightning beat the Stars 3-1. Later that day, Mangrum got an email from an editor saying her presence was requested at a Monday meeting. An HR rep got looped in. And that’s how Mangrum found herself getting grilled by the paper’s executive editor, Katrice Hardy (pictured). According to Mangrum, Hardy, who is Black, asked her if she would have used the word ‘bruh’ if the mayor were White. Mangrum, who is White, said yes. Her Twitter feed is littered with the word ‘bruh’ directed at all sorts of accounts, including those belonging to hockey fans and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife.

“Mangrum says she knows it’s not her place to tell people how they should feel. ‘I would never tell a person of color, “Oh, it wasn’t racist. You shouldn’t feel that way,” ‘ Mangrum says. ‘But I know my intent, and it was not at all about race. I use that word with my friends and when I tweet about hockey. It’s just part of my vernacular. I grew up in Central Florida, and, you know, I’m a millennial.’ . . .”

Tara Bahrampour added for The Washington Post, “The Dallas News Guild has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the dismissal, noting that Mangrum was a union member who helped organize a picket that took place on the same day she was fired.”

Hannah Dreier said on the “PBS NewsHour,” “When I first started this reporting a year ago, I thought that this would really be an agriculture story. I thought that kids would be working, but mostly on farms, maybe in restaurants. And I was shocked that I actually found most of these kids outside of factories . . . several of these children told us that they ended up in real trafficking situations, called the hot line and never heard back.” (Credit: PBS/YouTube)

Crackdown Follows Revelations on Migrant Child Labor

“The Biden administration on Monday announced a wide crackdown on the labor exploitation of migrant children around the United States, including more aggressive investigations of companies benefiting from their work,” Hannah Dreier reported Monday, updated Tuesday, for The New York Times.

“The development came days after The New York Times published an investigation into the explosive growth of migrant child labor throughout the United States. Children, who have been crossing the southern border without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in punishing jobs that flout child labor laws, The Times found.

“The White House laid out a host of new initiatives to investigate child labor violations among employers and improve the basic support that migrant children receive when they are released to sponsors in the United States. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, called the revelations in The Times ‘heartbreaking’ and ‘completely unacceptable.’

“As part of the new effort, the Department of Labor, which enforces these laws, said it would target not just the factories and suppliers that illegally employ children, but also the larger companies that have child labor in their supply chains. Migrant children often use false identification and find jobs through staffing agencies that do not verify their Social Security numbers.

“Companies have escaped fines in the past by blaming those agencies or other subcontractors when violations are discovered. . . .”

Lies by Fox Hosts Put Board in a Bind

Fox Corporation board members are facing scrutiny for not doing enough to prevent executives at Fox News from allowing lies about the 2020 election to be knowingly promoted to the network’s millions of viewers. One of them is Ramon Hernandez (pictured), a Los Angeles-based businessman who was CEO of Telemundo Group, Inc. from 1995 to 2000 and was its chairman from 1998 to 2000.

In the latest legal filing Monday from Dominion Voting Systems, it was revealed that behind the scenes, Fox Corp. board member Paul Ryan, former House speaker, pleaded with chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch, the Fox Corp. CEO, to prevent Donald Trump’s bogus election claims “from being broadcast to Fox News’ audience of millions,” Oliver Darcy reported Wednesday for CNN. “Ryan, according to messages uncovered in the case, said that Fox News should ‘move on from Donald Trump’ and ‘stop spouting election lies.’ ”

Hernandez could not be reached for comment, so it is not known what part he is playing in the scandal. But Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, the renowned professor and senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, told CNN that Ryan’s actions were not enough.

“That’s not what a director is supposed to do,” Sonnenfeld said on “AC360.” “That is a failure of management oversight.”

Darcy wrote in his “Reliable Sources” newsletter, “The Dominion lawsuit, which has already caused massive reputational damage to the Fox News brand, is still in the pre-trial phase of the case. There’s no telling what could emerge from a weeks-long trial in which prominent executives and hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are called to the stand. And it remains to be seen whether outside forces, such as potential shareholder lawsuits, come into play and exert added pressure on Murdoch to take action.”

Separately, Jeremy Peters wrote Monday for the New York Times that five days after a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol, another board member, Anne Dias (pictured), reached out to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch with an urgent plea.

“ ‘Considering how important Fox News has been as a megaphone for Donald Trump,’ she said, it was time ‘to take a stance.’ Ms. Dias, who sounded shaken by the riot, said she thought Fox News and the nation faced ‘an existential moment.’ ” According to the court documents filed Monday, Murdoch explained the decision to let election denier Mike Lindell run ads for his company, MyPillow, as a strictly financial — rather than political — move, saying: “It is not red or blue — it is green.”

As Telemundo’s chief executive in 1999, Hernandez apologized to Houston Astro owner Drayton McLane for allegations by executives of its local affiliate that McLane made derogatory remarks about Hispanics, the Associated Press reported at the time.

Hernandez said, “Based on my inquiry into the matter, and in reliance upon your representations to me . . . I believe that you did not make any racially motivated comments to our station management. Further, I believe you and the Houston Astros strongly support Hispanics.”

Marco Camacho, general manager of KTMD-TV, and sales manager Rod Rodriguez had alleged that McLane made belittling remarks about Hispanics.

In 2019, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists rescinded Fox News’ sponsorship of its annual conference in Texas and returned nearly $17,000 to the network in response to a radio host’s comments about Latino immigrants.

Then-NAHJ president Hugo Balta said the group made the move because Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes had repeatedly used prejudiced language toward immigrants.

Jonathan Capehart told The Wrap, “MSNBC has put a premium on covering key topics, including voting rights, police reform, the economy and health care, “not just in the abstract, but in ways where the audience feels a connection to the story that’s been told,” by, for example, inviting a slate of diverse guests to speak about everything from the war in Ukraine to the debt ceiling.”

Capehart Quits Washington Post Editorial Board

Jonathan Capehart quit the Washington Post editorial board after a dispute over whether warnings about the effects of voter suppression tactics in Georgia should be called “hyperbolic.“

An editorial — the unsigned, institutional voice of the newspaper — used the word. Capehart had written the opposite in his own column a month earlier. “Now listen: Just because people make their way around obstacles doesn’t mean said obstacles are no big deal. If that’s not apparent in this would-be voting horror story, look to another example — abortion rights,” Capehart contended.

Capehart remains associate editor, columnist, host of the “Capehart” podcast and anchor of “Post Live” virtual events, but his December departure from the editorial board, which took place after the dispute over the assessment of the Ralph Warnock-Herschel Walker senatorial contest — leaves no person of color on the board.

Several columnists of color remain on the Post’s opinion pages, however. Among them are Eugene Robinson, Colbert I. King, Perry Bacon Jr. and Karen Attiah.

Axios wrote in breaking the story about Capehart this week, “Since joining the Post as a member of its editorial board in 2007, Capehart has become one of the paper’s most visible and influential faces.“

Despite the Post’s becoming an international news source, Capehart is most visible to many as host of MSNBC’s “The Saturday Show” and “The Sunday Show.”

In a story in The Wrap Tuesday about MSNBC’s dominance among Black cable news viewers, Loree Seitz quoted Capehart on the network’s 25-month hold on the No. 1 spot with African Americans.

“Black viewers can see themselves reflected back at them not just in the anchor chair when it comes to, me, Joy Reid, Reverend Al [Sharpton], Symone [Sanders-Townsend] or any of the other African American anchors, but also other anchors of color at the network,” Capehart told The Wrap. “The network covers the stories that are important to the American people at large, but stories that are of particular interest to the African American community.”’

The Post said in a statement, “The Post’s Opinion section is committed to diverse representation in all its pages. Writers like Keith Richburg and Mili Mitra regularly contribute editorials. In recent months, the section also announced the addition of several contributing columnists including Theodore Johnson, Natasha Sarin and Bina Venkataraman, among several others. The section plans to further expand the range of voices in the months to come.”

Bernadette Carey Smith in 1966 as a reporter for a women’s news section of The New York Times. She spoke to Norman Hartnell, a noted British designer, at a cocktail party. (Credit: The New York Times)

Bernadette Carey Smith Gets Her Obituary

When this column reported in February the death of journalist Bernadette Carey, a pioneer at both the New York Times and Washington Post, it included the fact that her passing took place “without benefit of an obituary in either of the two major newspapers where she worked.”

That changed Friday when the Times published online an obituary by staff writer Neil Genzlinger that said Carey “may well have been the newspaper’s first Black woman reporter, although records are inconclusive; certainly she was one of only a handful of Black journalists, male or female, hired by The Times before the late 1960s.”

The Post followed three hours later.

The Times’ headline was, “Bernadette Carey Smith, Black Reporter in Mostly White Newsrooms, Dies at 83.”

The Post’s: “Bernadette Carey Smith, barrier-breaking reporter, dies at 83,” by obituaries editor Adam Bernstein.

The Times provided greater context: “The Times hired her to work on its women’s news section, called Food, Fashions, Family, Furnishings. . . .The women who worked for the section said they were overlooked by the rest of the paper. For most of its life span the department was set apart from the main newsroom — relegated to ‘some dark little corner of The Times,’ as Phyllis Levin, another alumna of the section, put it in 2018 in a Times article.” A link to the Feb. 12 “Journal-isms” column was included.

Behind the scenes, a collection of journalists had worked to alert the Times and Post about Carey’s significance. Times managing editors Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan immediately recognized it.

A letter to the Post, which had rejected the family’s request for a news obituary, was delivered Friday and signed by these Post alumni:

Karlyn Barker, Bobbi Bowman, Ivan C. Brandon, Leon Dash, Joel Dreyfuss, Dorothy Gilliam, Martha McNeil Hamilton, Jesse W. Lewis Jr., Wanda S. Lloyd, Myra MacPherson, Judith Martin, Penny Mickelbury, Richard Prince, Megan Rosenfeld, Ronald A. Taylor, Hollie I. West and Jack E. White.

MacPherson, an alumna of the Style section, saw a lesson to be passed along: “If you get this obituary in the Post, I think we should publish the fact that it happened only through people like you and former staff members who put pressure on them to do so.”

Short Takes

Melvin B. Miller, former Bay State Banner editor and publisher, with new owners Ron Mitchell, left, and Andre Stark, right, at the Banner’s office in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. (Credit: Erint Images)
  • “Ozy Media is not in Kansas anymore. Or in any other jurisdiction. The company has decided to cease operations, according to a Twitter post today,” Bruce Haring and Jill Goldsmith reported Wednesday for Deadline. ” ‘In light of its current operational and legal challenges, the OZY board has determined that it’s in the best interests of its stakeholders to suspend operations immediately,’ the tweet said. The decision comes shortly after Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson was arrested and charged with fraud by federal investigators, according to multiple news reports. . . .”
  • “We’ve selected a comic strip to replace Dilbert, and one reason we chose it is the number of you who said we should have looked for a new voice when we replaced Funky Winkerbean with Beetle Bailey. Chris Quinn, editor and vice president of content, cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer, wrote readers Saturday in a “letter from the editor.” “The new strip is called Crabgrass by artist Tauhid Bondia. . . . Crabgrass is a comic strip about a multiracial childhood friendship by a Black artist. We dropped Dilbert because its creator, Scott Adams, went on a racist rant in a video that circulated widely. Crabgrass portrays the very opposite of Adams’ hateful advice to white people that they get away from Black people. . . .”
Oscar Micheaux’s “Within Our Gates,” from 1920, “has earned its own place in history as agitprop at its most necessary,” Slate reports. “Through its mixed-race protagonist Sylvia (Evelyn Preer), the film starkly portrays lynching and the attempted rape of a Black woman by a white man at a time when such crimes were everyday fears for Black people. It’s daring, dangerous filmmaking, and a must-see for anyone attempting to unpack the history of racial conflict in America.”
  • In 2003, “the (AAFCA) African American Film Critics Assn. emerged. Co-founded by Gil L. Robertson, Daryle Lockhart, Kathy Williamson, and Kevin ‘Chill’ Heard, the organization’s purpose was clear: to amplify Black voices in film criticism and arts entertainment journalism from across the African Diaspora,” Dominique Fluker reported Wednesday for Variety. “Today, the AAFCA actively reviews and spotlights cinema at large, with a particular emphasis on film and TV highlighting the Black experience. The association’s members are also engaged in AAFCA’s advocacy work, which includes programming for students interested in film criticism and journalism and general community outreach. . . .”
  • “Twenty-four-year city resident, attorney and author Elisabeth ‘Liz’ Petry (pictured), a longtime newspaper reporter and daughter of a best-selling Black author, died Feb. 22 after a brief battle with cancer, her family said,” Cassandra Day reported Wednesday, updated Thursday, for the Middletown (Conn.) Press. “She was 74.” Petry worked for the Middletown Press, Meriden Record-Journal and Hartford Courant. “Petry’s mother Ann Petry is author of ‘The Street,’ written in 1946. It is still in publication today. She was the first Black author to sell one million copies of a book. . . her husband of 18 years, Vietnam veteran Larry Riley, was part of Secret Service detail for presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Petry was compiling her Black family’s Civil War-era letters into a documentary, ‘For Dear Mother’s Sake.’ . . .”
  • Monica Drake (pictured) “is being promoted to a deputy managing editor,” New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn announced Wednesday. “She will expand her portfolio to become our newsroom leader for culture and talent, oversee our growing Culture and Careers department, and continue her strategic role as the coordinator of new journalism initiatives. . . .” Kahn also said, “One of our top priorities is to make The New York Times the best place to work in journalism, ensuring that we have the talent and diversity it takes to cover the world with authority and sensitivity. . . . In her expanded role Monica will join the senior masthead to oversee and advance these efforts. . . .”

  • ” ‘Tamron Hall‘ has been renewed for a fifth season with leading broadcast groups including Hearst, Scripps, Nexstar, Cox and Gray, ABC News president Kim Godwin announced, Natalie Oganesyan reported Thursday for The Wrap. “The groups join the ABC Owned Television Stations Group, which previously announced a two-year renewal of the Daytime Emmy-winning nationally syndicated talk show through the 2023-2024 season.. . .”
  • Accepting the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award Thursday from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation, MSNBC President Rashida Jones (pictured) said, “We grew up in the small town of York, Pennsylvania, and I remember walking with my parents along George Street as they marched for causes championed by organizations like the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. They admired civil rights leaders like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali who used the power of the press to challenge the status quo and stand up to hatred and discrimination. It’s one of the reasons I was inspired to go to Hampton University, an HBCU, to better understand our history and to pursue a career in the public service of journalism. As a Black woman, a wife, a mother, a daughter and the president of MSNBC, I am firmly committed to social commentary and analysis that better informs our nation and leads to a better and more just society.” More from TVNewser
  • . . . W.E.B. Du Bois (pictured), the activist, scholar and journalist, might have been ahead of his time, but who knew he was decades ahead? In an MSNBC transcription of Rashida Jones’ remarks was this line: The First Amendment “has empowered an extraordinary lineage of civil rights and social justice reformers — people like Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du-boyz, and Maya Angelow [Angelou] — to write with passion, persuasion and conviction about deep injustices and inequities. . . .” DeWayne Wickham: Official moved to silence W.E.B. DuBois for publishing anti-lynching editorial
  • “NBC News partnered up with our owned stations for another American Vets segment on Black Vets, which is airing on NBC News NOW tonight at 8pm ET, as well as five of our owned stations — NBC Philly, DC, Connecticut, San Diego and Bay Area — with a digital component now up across 11 of our owned station websites,” an NBC spokesperson messaged Monday. “What really sets this apart is it wasn’t just a piece produced for the owned stations, it was a collaboration, with those five [owned] stations helping in the reporting and production of the report, led by Lucy Bustamante. They will each have their own localized piece running in their own newscasts, as well as the national story airing on NBC News NOW tonight. . . .”

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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

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