by Ross Peterson (editor of Anything Prose)
The previous post+ that I uploaded did a disservice to the subject of Afro-American accomplishments and media visibility during the year 2003. Summing up the headlines in point form is unjustified and makes Amy Alexander, the author of the article, look almost as superficial as I was being. I apologize, and she is much better at getting down to the nitty-gritty beneath the banner headlines.
The author says more in her article, than at first meets the eye. There is some real meat regarding the inequalities of opportunity facing African-Americans, the systemic discrimination they face, and even about how the invasion of Iraq is partly a race issue. Amy Alexander writes the following:
"Sharpton is at least causing the other Democratic candidates to confront many issues that they would otherwise happily skirt:disparities in income, education and incarceration rates of black and white citizens; the toxic effect of big money on national political campaigns, and the Bush Administration's phoney-baloney reasons for throwing down on Iraq."
Her take may not run deep (at least in this example of an almost tongue-in-cheek review of journalistic fluff), but her heart is always in the right place. In some paragraphs her writing is even trenchant. Take affirmative action, for example.
"(W)e'll probably face another (court) challenge in the years to come. It was encouraging, though, to see institutions like the U.S. military and several private industries filing briefs on the side of the University of Michigan, the college that had been sued by a white woman who claimed she'd been wronged by the school's attempts to bring racial diversity to its law school."
Or the way she lambasts the Chicago-establishment style of providing security in run-down bars and clubs.
"Dozens of mostly-black Chicagoans were suffocated to death after some nincompoop security guard unleashed pepper spray in the crowed club near downtown."
In fact, Alexander is a real trooper, given the fact that she cannot just turn her back on these stories. She finesses the plagiarism issue surrounding Jason Blair, how he invented sources and stories whole cloth at the New York Times. Alexander turns the media scandal on its back to expose how Blair being fired unleashed unsubtle forms of white-collar racism in New England and even the less genteel Washington D.C. media hacks.
"Sure enough, not two days after the story broke, there was The Washington Post's media columnist, Howard Kurtz, bleating on his CNN press show that a "white male hack" would never have been allowed to keep writing at the august Times."
My mea culpa is that I must admit to readers that I fell in a worse trap of media-driven shallow thinking by posting a mere point-summary on only the headline-catching news. Unlike what I cobbled together, Amy Alexander used writing skillfully to make some very cogent points. She lambasted the media and I merely followed in the newsmakers' well worn path. I'll be more careful at how I write leads and kickers to news items in the future.
+http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/342901
