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August 30, 2002
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Don Wycliff writes in the Chicago Tribune:
When should race be used as an identifier?Here's the text of a correction that ran in the Tribune last Saturday: "A brief in Wednesday's Metro section about a United Airlines flight attendant who successfully sued the company for race, sex and age discrimination failed to mention the man's race. Leroy Gordon is African-American."
It was a reader who called our attention to this. I was relieved, when the metro desk sent in its report on the error, to learn that it was simply an oversight: In trimming his story down to a brief, the reporter didn't notice that he had trimmed out the complainant's race.
This isn't the first time race has been curiously left out of a story where it appropriately belonged. Every few months, it seems, I get a letter or phone call from a reader wanting to know why, in an otherwise thoroughly reported story--and these seem to come up most often in the context of crime stories--we neglected to include the person's race.
As often as not, after I've queried the editors, the answer turns out to be that someone exercised an excess of caution.
The Tribune stylebook, our fundamental guide in this as in most other matters journalistic, offers this general prescription on race: "Derogatory and unnecessary references to race do not belong in the Tribune."
[. . .] Many of my most rabid correspondents would say that these examples [omitted - hit the link, cypherpunk] subtly load the dice against the truth, because they speak of a white suspect when "everybody knows" that the real problem is crime committed by blacks.
These are the folks who, within hours after the story broke last month about a mob's beating two men to death after a traffic accident on the South Side, began firing off e-mails like this one:
"Why doesn't your paper give the color of the people involved in this murder? Could it be because they are blacks killing whites in a brutal manner? If it were the other way around I know without a doubt you would be doing so, and in a sensational manner."(Of course, the real reason we didn't mention race was that it wasn't an issue: all those involved were black.)
They're the ones who conveniently forget Charles Stuart, the Bostonian who hatched and executed an elaborate plan to rid himself of his pregnant wife and blame the whole thing on a shadowy black criminal. They forget Susan Smith, who deep-sixed her car with her two children inside and then contrived a tale of a black carjacker to explain the disappearance of her car and kids.
I'd forgotten Charles Stuart's name. I have not forgotten the incident, although, as Mr. Wycliff notes, others have more convenient memories.
Ask around. You'll probably notice a pretty strict racial breakdown of who does and doesn't recall those details. I'm assuming you know black people to ask in the first place; warbloggers are, obviously, exempt from this.
Not that melanin content has anything to do with how the memory works; this is that race as social construct thing again, another point the warbloggers will no doubt miss entirely. I expect one of them to accuse me of being racist for even mentioning the disparity, and dispute that such even exists.
All without actually talking to any black people.
As noted previously, ignorance is fine (and I really want some barfi now, but I don't think the Indian place that opened down the block serves it). Speaking from a position of ignorance, on the other hand, and resisting all attempts by others to rectify it, is being a dumbass. In their case, being a dumbass cracka.
And I'm really tired of dealing with those right now.
Posted by Aaron at August 30, 2002 10:07 AM
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