POLL DROPS THE BALL ON ANALYZING INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM

Ethnic Media Take On Race Challenge

New Poll Highlights Media’s Role in Covering Race Relations

New America Media, News Report, Sandip Roy

 Dec 12, 2007

Editor’s Note: The first-ever multilingual poll of black, Hispanic and Asian Americans is a call to action for the ethnic media leaders who sponsored it. While respondents believe that ethnic media are “irresponsible” when it comes to covering race relations, they also describe ethnic media as a vital intermediary for strengthening inter-group communication. NAM Editor Sandip Roy interviewed some of the poll’s media sponsors about how they view their shifting role in covering race relations in America.

SAN FRANCISCO – When Tae Sook Jeong, editor-in-chief of The Korea Times, attended a town hall meeting in San Francisco after a local Asian weekly published a column called “Why I Hate Blacks,” he realized it wasn’t enough to say sorry.

“We need to know what’s being whispered in our own backyards,” says Jeong. “We need a get-to-know-each-other campaign.” The first national poll of race relations among Asian Americans, African Americans and Hispanics from New America Media is a “starting point” in that campaign, says Jeong.

The Korea Times, along with eight other major ethnic newspapers, signed on as a co-sponsor of the poll because ethnic media are increasingly becoming aware that it’s not enough just to cover their own communities.

“This is an extraordinary piece of information that can hopefully help our three communities to have a better understanding of each other,” said Pedro Rojas, La Opinión’s executive editor.

“Wherever you live and work in the states today, and especially for us in California, learning from communities near us and around us is vital to growing,” says Anh Do, vice president of Nguoi Viet Daily News in Westminster, Calif., one of the oldest Vietnamese newspapers in the country and a sponsor of the survey.

“We have to understand what’s going on in the real world,” agrees Maria Mejia, editor of El Mensajero, a Spanish-language weekly in San Francisco published by ImpreMedia media group, another of the co-sponsors. “People say this is a Latino paper, and that’s an African American paper, but we are all part of the same society.”

But when it comes to covering that society, ethnic media editors and publishers find themselves navigating through a minefield. When Tim Lau, chief executive officer of the Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily, hears stories about crimes in Oakland’s Chinatown or San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley he worries about how to cover the issue. “There is a perception that the crimes are committed by African Americans,” says Lau. “We want victims to report the crimes. But we don’t want to add to the stereotypes.”

“But it’s important to find out if they are real or just anecdotal,” says Gail Berkley, editor at the Sun Reporter which serves the African-American community in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Without knowing the facts you cannot have a dialogue.”

The New America Media poll found deep racial tensions and suspicions among the main ethnic groups even though there was also widespread optimism about the future of a multi-racial America.

The lack of dialogue between the different ethnic communities worries ethnic media leaders. The poll found that about 70 percent of each ethnic group believed that the media had a responsibility to bring communities together. Kai Ping Liu, deputy city editor of Chinese-language World Journal, worries that the media do not do enough. “It’s partly a manpower issue,” says Liu. “But we should cover other communities more. It’s not just their stories. I would like to learn from them.”

Liu says he would like to see more stories about declining African American and Latino enrollment in the University of California system even as numbers of Asian students continue to rise. “We have to learn to share public resources fairly,” says Liu who worries about the negative stereotypes many Asians have towards African Americans even as they “enjoy the achievements of the civil rights movement.”

But AsianWeek’s editor Ted Fang says amidst the tensions and stereotypes, he sees some good news. AsianWeek just held a town hall meeting in San Francisco’s Fillmore District, a historically black neighborhood that now houses Japantown. “We brought the African-American and Japanese-American communities together to talk about the future of the area,” says Fang. Now Yoshi’s Jazz Club, which brings together jazz masters and sushi, has just opened in San Francisco.

Fang had his own taste of the tensions when AsianWeek was in the middle of a firestorm over the “Why I Hate Blacks” column. Now the newspaper is reviewing a novel by one of its former editors about Asian men who develop relationships with black women. “It’s about more than political statements,” says Fang. “This is about love relationships.”

The Sun Reporter’s Berkley says she is not surprised with the racial stereotypes found by the poll. But she is heartened that more than 60 percent of each group believes that relations between ethnic groups will get better in the next 10 years.

“That’s a hopeful sign,” says Berkley. “It’s a little surprising because you mostly read about stereotypes and segregated neighborhoods. Perhaps this is where the media can play a role in bringing about a more hopeful future.”

The Korea Times is already embarking on that endeavor, says Korea Times’ Tae Sook Jeong. The paper is planning a series every other week in 2008, called “Getting Together – Let’s Bring Down the Walls.”

“I wanted to start this summer,” says Jeong. “But I have been waiting for this poll.”

The other partners of the poll included Philippine News and Asian Journal.

Related Articles:

Deep Divisions, Shared Destiny – A Poll of Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans on Race Relations

Listen to Ted Fang discuss the NAM Poll on UpFront

MP3

Ethnic Media Convene to Talk Racism After AsianWeek Fiasco

NAM Polls

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My questions on this *poll* would be the following, and that would be what this poll lacks:

-Where was this poll given and how was the breakdown on the numbers of participants (400 Asians, 355, Hispanics, 350 Black Americans) arrived at?

-Why did the poll limit itself to the obvious: POC do not trust each,that there is much racial/ethnic tension between all minority groups?

-Why stop with the “can’t we all just get along” mentality? Why concentrate on so-called IRs combatting and solving the centuries-old race problem of white supremacy? Race-mixing has not destroyed white supremacy by now, so how can it do what American society has not and will not do:  acknowledge the common humanity of all people in this country?

-And the biggest mistake of this so-called poll are three major things it does not address, three things which cause the continuance of white supremacy/white privilege/white dominance. It is not about how a black person feels about how white person feels about how Asian person feels about Latino person. That much is seen and understood across the board in the strained and pathetic non-relations that every group in this country shows towards each other’s group. It is what was terribly missed in this poll that bothers me, the three things which wreck and destroy ANY attempt by anti-racist people to combat and dismantle racism in all of our lives:

A.  White supremacy is a structural/institutional problem pervasive in the lives of EVERY American who lives in this country. No one escapes the sick psychosis of white supremacy. It affects everyone in all aspects of their lives—economy, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, military/war and sex. WS has corrupted all of these important factors of all of our lives. Trying to combat racism on the INDIVIDUAL level will never dismantle WS. WS can only be deconstructed and obliterated starting at the top where it starts and where it is maintained.

B.  Individual people are influenced by this pervasive WS pathology of dominance, dominance of a culture that has been beaten into the psyche of every American. The dominant frame, the dominant “mainstream”, i.e. “white/normal/superior has been embedded into the conscious of all races that if you are not white, you are not “right”, you are not “benevolent, you are not to be trusted, that only “whiteness” is good and right and if you trust or God forbid, align yourself with other non-whites then you have signed, sealed and delivered your death warant.  (As one question on the poll asked:  “Who do you feel more comfortable doing business with? Whites, Asians or Blacks?” The answers to that question is most revealing.) Racist policies that have drive a wedge between blacks and all other minorities stems from the insidious poison of the maintenance of WS. That there are some Asians who would trust whites more than blacks, some Latinos who would rather trust whites than blacks, that there are some blacks who would rather trust whites than everyone else——-proves how deeply entrenched the upholding of WS is in America.

C. Third the media must be excoriated for its hand in the promulgating, propagandering and proliferation of racist/sexist vicious hateful stereotypes that pit all minorities against each other. The role of the Fourth Estate in the maintenance and continuance of WS must not be absolved nor ignored. As long as racial communities live in their segregated and isolated communities, cut off from each other through accepted Jane/Jim Crow lives, and never question the media’s hand in perpetuating racist/sexist lies/myths (via TV, movies, cable programs—-overwhelming negative portrayals of black men, little no to negative portrayals of white men; the constant bombardment of the lie of the Myth of the Model Minority [pitting Asians against blacks], the double standard of portraying black women in the media in one way, and the portraying of white women in the media in another way], as well as the media’s overt and covert maintenance of structural/institutional racist policies all across America—-as long as all Americans of every background do not question the media, do ot challenge the media on its misrepresentations of POC, then there is where half the battle is not being fought.

The media needs to be brought out into the spotlight and grilled and reamed out for its hand in upholding the institution of WS.

The media is not blameless at all.

All groups in the poll (black, yellow, brown) when asked the following question on the poll, came to the conclusion that the so-called mainstream media has done a pathetic  and disgraceful job in not portraying positive aspects of all racial groups, and not balancing the negative with many positive images:

______________________________________________________________________________“6. The study indicates that a majority of African Americans and a significant percentage of Hispanics and Asian Americans consider the coverage of problems related to race in the ethnic media to be irresponsible. At the same time, overwhelming majorities of African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanics think that the ethnic media in the United States have the responsibility to do everything in their power to improve race relations. This poll gives ethnic media a rationale, an obligation and a basic direction on this issue—to teach each group about the other and begin a dialogue that will move race relations into the twenty-first century. “______________________________________________________________________________

The so-called mainstream media is the biggest perpetrator of racist/sexist crimes against America for with its televised images of lies/myths/half-truths/untruths/misinformation/disinformation it can do more damage in a mere nanosecond than all the Bilbos, Eastlands, Thurmonds, Plecks, Wallaces and Faubuses could have ever have dreamed of doing in their time. The media needs to be called out on its filth that it spreads across this country and around the globe—racist, ethnic messages and images that dominate the so-called “mainstream America”—-the white society that the media serves serves like the slobbering, groveling lap-dog that it is. Mainstream media certainly does its part in perpetuating racist images, but, ethnic media should not be left off the hook. It is not enough that ethnic media addresses issues of its own communities. Ethnic media must also address racist images and messages that it too can perpetuate and indoctrinate within its own respective community. Just as the mainstream media seeks to divide and destroy in its irresponsible coverage, ethnic media should seek to build coalitions between the three groups (Black Americans, Latinos, Asians).

Polls about how various groups think of each other is fine.

But, why tell most of us what we already know?

Why stop there telling us what is the obvious. Yes, POC distrust each other.  Yes, POC have been brainwashed to worship and seek after whiteness, thereby, knowingly and unknowingly, doing their  orchestrated part in maintaining white supremacy, white dominance, white privilege.

It is not enough to talk about what many of us already know.

It is time for all to sit down and acknowledge how this country’s lock-step acceptance of the normativeness of WS has nearly annihilated us all.

Until all people are accorded humanity and respect for their INDIVIDUALITY as well as their HUMANITY, then, and only then can America truly say that it has finally set foot on the path towards a civil society that gives value to all, and not the expense that leads to the devaluation, the detriment,  the debasement of one group  that benefits others.

Then, maybe then, we will have a true society based on respect of the differences, and the sameness of all groups. A society where distrust, fear, terror, and racial/ethnic hatred will no longer continue to flourish. Then we will have a society where POC are no longer vilified because of who and what they are, a society that truly welcomes ALL, and not some that it has deemed worthy of having been blessed by the patronizing pat on the head by the oppressors who still struggle to maintain life and death over all who live in this country.