Words matter. And news people, get the term “racially
motivated” out of your mouth.
With every act of mass murder by a white
supremacist shooter, the news media provide a
window for us to appreciate the cluelessness
of many journalists, reporters, writers and
editors on the issue of racism. When a 21-year
old white gunman killed three Black people at
a Dollar General store in Jacksonville,
Florida — after
attempting to enter and being turned away
from Edward Waters University, an HBCU —
many news reports said the mass shooting was
“racially motivated.”
Nikole
Hannah-Jones, the New York Times journalist, professor and creator
of the 1619 Project, challenged us to do
better and be better, tweeting: “Journalists:
the Jacksonville mass murder was not racially
motivated violence, it was RACIST violence. We
must be specific and direct with our
language.”
As a Black man and journalism and media studies professor
who thinks a great deal about the role and
reporting of racism in the media, I agree with
Hannah-Jones. Using wishy-washy and
meaningless language to describe acts of
racist violence fails to educate and inform
the public on the true nature of racism, and
in reality, inflicts harm by promoting a
narrative that whitewashes, launders and
disinfects racism for white public
consumption.
Euphemisms in news reporting such as
“racially motivated,” “racially tinged” and
“race-based” reflect a reluctance or even a
refusal of journalists to confront the issue
of racism head-on, much less name it. Terms
like “racially motivated” neutralize
racism and turn it into an abstraction. Racism becomes something that may or
may not exist in the heart of an individual
person and is separated from institutions of
oppression, white power, hierarchy and
privilege. When divorced from the violence
that is inflicted on Black people by white
structures of power, racism becomes some vague
concept that is perceived as no big deal, and
often exaggerated and overblown by Black
people.
Meanwhile, this soothing language on racism not only makes
racism neutral, it also ignores the role of
race-baiting politicians, public figures and
media personalities, stochastic terrorists and
arsonists like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who
create the environment that facilitates these
racist mass murders.
Glaring and conspicuous acts of racism
should be identified for what they are, and
there is academic literature and historical
research for journalists to draw upon.
However, much of the media industry is not up
to the task. Hence, the importance of Black
media such as theGrio to provide an
unadulterated view on such issues.
America’s newsrooms are overwhelmingly
white, despite the country’s increasingly
melanated demographics. News organizations
should rely more heavily on Black sources and
other sources of color in their reporting,
seek diversity, equity and inclusion in their
staffing to create a better and more
reliable media product, and train journalists
— including white journalists — in racial
literacy.
A white-dominated news industry does not
want to face up to racism because much of
white America does not want to deal with the
impact of racism and does not have to in any
case. In the way that white supremacist
politicians neutralized
their language in colorblind terminology in the
post-civil rights era — replacing the n-word
with talk about states’ rights, taxes,
welfare, and most recently “woke” and the like — news media followed
suit. As a result, racism did not go away but
was normalized and mainstreamed as a
legitimate viewpoint in the public discourse.
And the threat of racism was magnified even as
it was swept under the rug through language.
Part of the problem is the eagerness of
news organizations to prove they are objective
— whatever that means. News organizations
engage in a form of performative
neutrality to give the impression they are
reporting straight down the middle and not
showing favoritism to any particular political
side. The problem with this “both sides”
approach is what passes for objectivity is
defined by the values
of white editors and reporters, with the goal to avoid offending white
readers.
This reminds me in many ways of the
current push by white conservatives to ban
books, courses and other materials in schools
that could trigger
white children and bring discomfort to snowflakes.
Just as white children are shortchanged by a
whitewashed education devoid of Blackness, so
too are white readers ill-served when the
“news” they read is a carefully engineered
land of make-believe where racism doesn’t
exist.
Rather than strive for objectivity, journalists should
strive for the truth, as I teach my students
at Rutgers. Many stories have more than two
sides. Some have multiple sides, and others
have one. But seeking a middle ground between
racial justice and democracy on the one hand
and racism and white supremacist violence on
the other is not journalism. I don’t know what
that is.
Relegating racist violence to a few
gun-toting neo-Nazis who write manifestos
ignores the current political and social
environment, where white people, particularly
white men, are encouraged to feel like they
are the aggrieved
in society, that they are the true victims. As
young white men are radicalized online to form
the
greatest threat to America — white
domestic terrorism — politicians such as
DeSantis wage a war on the “woke” and punish
Black people through harmful policies in
education, civil and voting rights, criminal
justice and the like. These policies and
laws offer a wink and a nod to the white
supremacists to wave
Nazi flags at Walt Disney World and beam
swastikas on Jacksonville buildings, inflict
violence on Black people and take Black lives
in the dollar store.
Things have become so bad in Florida that
earlier this year, the NAACP issued a travel
advisory for Black people “in response to
Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to
erase Black history and to restrict diversity,
equity, and inclusion programs in Florida
schools.” It is no wonder that the
Jacksonville mass shooting took place in this
environment.
If the news media are failing to do their
job and report effectively on racism and
racist violence, there are solutions. For
example, the AP
Stylebook tells journalists not to use
“racially charged,” “racially divisive,”
“racially tinged” or similar terms that have
little meaning when “racist” or “racism” apply
to the situation. And when you call out
racism, provide
context to help readers understand.
Without reporting on this larger context of racism in
America, journalists are committing
malpractice. And no one is served except
racists when an act of white supremacist
domestic terrorism is brushed off as a
“racially motivated” shooting.
This commentary is
also posted on TheGrio.com.
