Reporting, and Biking, While Black

Reporting While Black

Gene Demby of Code Switch, photo from NPR
Gene Demby of Code Switch; photo from NPR

Gene Demby is the lead blogger in Code Switch, an NPR team that reports on race, culture and ethnicity. He writes and speaks about what it is like to be reporting on black deaths for a black reporter.

He describes meeting up in St. Louis with other black journalists he’s known for years when they were covering the one-year anniversary of Ferguson.

“We’ve interviewed weeping family members, scrutinized dash cam footage and witnesses’ YouTube uploads, and wrestled with the long-term political implications of what this moment might mean. At this point, I’m probably approaching 30,000 words on the subject of race and policing. It’s everything you want in a story — consequential, evolving, complicated. This work will matter in a way that so many other stories don’t or won’t,” he says.

But he also talks about the toll it takes on him and his colleagues. He says he has come close to quitting and knows he’s not alone in that feeling.

He says, “Every black Ferguson resident I interviewed last year had his own story about an unfair encounter with local cops. And, unsurprisingly, nearly all black journalists I’ve talked to mentioned a similar story from their off-the-clock lives.”

Demby says, “I’ve written about the problem of being The Only One in the Room — the unwanted burden of representing the concerns of an entire group of people, coupled with the anxious desire to do a good job of it.

“It does seem there’s one good way of preventing black journalists who cover black death from burning out, or . . [feeling alone]: Hire enough of us that no one black reporter or editor in a newsroom has to feel like it’s entirely “fallen upon him” to tell these stories.”

Biking While Black

This morning I had breakfast with a classmate who told me another story. Two black male teens, wearing backpacks and riding their bikes near their home in suburban Philadelphia, were followed by a woman in the neighborhood, who then called the police to say she was worried about their presence.

The boys were picked up and taken to the station where the police found their wet swim suits in their backbacks. Their mother was understandably and justifiably furious.

How crazy is this? How does our society today allow people to make assumptions about black youth, and for the police to act on those assumptions? And what happened to the woman who reported being worried? My friend didn’t say, but I can guess – nothing!

We have so much work to do.

Adamawa Peace Initiative

Political map of Nigeria showing all the states
Political map of Nigeria showing all the states

I had this email from my Peace Corps colleague Lowell, who served in Mubi, in what is now Adamawa State of Nigeria. He is in touch with the President of the American University of Nigeria, AUN.

Lowell said, “I want to share with you a thread of discussion I have had with Margee Ensign, President of AUN.  She and other leaders, Muslim and Christian, in Yola formed API, the Adamawa Peace Initiative, initially with lots of activities, sports leagues, etc. to help young people who were unemployed.
“With Boko Haram’s rampages, more than a hundred thousand refugees fled to Yola. AUN and API then sought to feed them, getting help from outside agencies and with considerable support, as I understand it, coming from Atilku Abubakar, AUN’s founder (and my former student) [and one of Nigeria’s wealthiest men].”
Upper northeast of Nigeria
Upper northeast of Nigeria; Yola is marked as the capital of Adamawa State
“Now many are returning home to find devastation. They have missed planting their crops.  So AUN-API is seeking to provide aid for housing, planting and school-restoration. Thirty thousand refugees are still in Yola needing to be fed and supported.  Julie and I have been contributing to the refugee needs through the AUN Foundation ( www.aunf.org).
“AUN has also offered scholarships and helped the Chibok girls who escaped to come with their families to Yola and are raising money for them to finish secondary school.  They will then help them with scholarships to go to AUN.”

Waiting on Buhari

Okey Ndibe, Nigerian author, has posted an article in Sahara Reporters encouraging Buhari to action. But he also finds a lesson for Nigeria in the waiting.

“The chastening lesson is that there’s something fundamentally askew with Nigeria as a nation-space. The fate and fortunes of 170 million people should never hang on the whims of any one person.”

He says, “What Nigeria needs is the same mechanism that has served—and serves—every great, thriving nation: institutions. Nigerians don’t need a superman who lectures them from the rarefied heights of Mount Olympus on corruption. We will be better served to have anti-corruption laws, agents and institutions that will search out and prosecute the corrupt, even if they happened to be related to the sitting president.

“We need a culture that abhors corruption far more than we need a president who fumes at some of the corrupt.”

Indeed!

 

Author: Catherine Onyemelukwe

Author, blogger, speaker. Born in New York, grew up in mid west United States, lived in Nigeria for 24 years, back in U.S. since 1986. Advocate for racial justice.