Blast from the Past: After centuries of racism, we're still not laughing. Voices from the Community: Amy Leang's racist experience at ASNE. Emil Amok: The Puckheads Think They're Funny. Lead Editorial: Heh, heh, heh.
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Newsrooms Must Walk the ‘Diversity’ Walk

Not just talk the talk

By Amy Leang/ ASNE Reporter

Editors Note: In the following essay, Amy Leang tells of her first day experience at the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) 2001 Convention, held in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of this month. It was originally published in the ASNE Reporter.

Coming into the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) Reporter project, I was full of excitement. This week promised the opportunity to work with the nation’s top editors and rising students.

“This is truly a rainbow newsroom,” Bobbi Bowman, ASNE diversity director, said.

Looking around the hotel room that was to be our makeshift news lab, I felt a surging sense of pride — pride for the accomplishments that have led me to this convention, pride at being a journalist of color among other journalists of color and pride for this association at realizing our value and potential. All that pride soon disappeared, though, with the first night of the conference.

One of my editors had sent me downstairs to cover a comedy troupe at the opening reception. When I got there, however, I found it hard to take a picture. Inside the dim room, there were hundreds of editors.

On stage and in the spotlight was the troupe, Capitol Steps. Dressed in costumes, the performers presented a skit concerning current Chinese and U.S. relations. They were white males impersonating a Chinese official and his translator. The Chinese official sported a black wig and thick glasses and spoke in a disconcerting version of “Chinese.”

“Ching ching chong chong,” the man shouted as he gestured wildly with his hands.

What was disturbing was not just that this was happening, but that hundreds of editors, my future bosses, were laughing. I felt myself swallowed by all the loud laughter. Each time the “Chinese” voice became more jarring, the editors would laugh even harder.

Despite feeling humiliated, I finished the job and turned in my pictures.

The next morning, I woke up crying.

Angry and hurt, I thought of so many questions. If all of these editors thought this caricature of my ethnic heritage was so funny, what did they think about me? What did they think about the Chinese community, and how did that reflect in their coverage of news such as the spy-plane crisis and Wen Ho Lee? If newspapers are supposed to speak for their communities, did they think the Chinese American population would have found that skit amusing? Would they have laughed at a white man in black face if the crisis concerned an African nation?

All this week, I’ve been covering panels and speakers who never fail to mention the importance of diversity in the newsroom. I have yet to hear someone mention the importance of newsroom training in cultural tolerance and sensitivity. News leaders wonder why so many minorities are leaving and why their communities are traditionally distrustful of journalists. After that incident, I can clearly see why.

Many newsrooms talk the “diversity” talk but certainly do not walk the “diversity” walk.

Aggressively recruiting minorities does not necessarily solve the root of the problem; it only salves it. Journalists of color are expected to represent their ethnic backgrounds and educate their co-workers by moving up a ladder in an environment where they must constantly prove they belong. Those who do “make it” do not necessarily represent their communities because they often had to sacrifice their convictions in order to get there.

Newsrooms should strive for the tossed-salad idea of integration rather than the melting-pot model. They should train newsrooms to be more culturally savvy and aware. They could take the time to work with ethnic newspapers and their staffs because these publications cover the issues that matter most to the communities American papers are trying to sway.

I’m not saying we should stop minority recruitment, but we should work on knowing their cultures and issues better in order to keep them.

We may all have had a person of color eat lunch with us once or twice, but that does not automatically make them our friends. We need to take the time to know who they are. This idea similarly applies to our newsrooms. Just because a newsroom has some journalists of color working for them, that does not mean they are not prejudiced.

I still love journalism and what it strives to be. I love to tell stories through my photographs and to know that I’ve helped someone.

But after this experience, I can’t help but feel as though my presence here is only lip service to the idea of diversity in newsrooms. I don’t want to be disillusioned by the people running this industry, but now I am.

And this frightens me because I’ve barely started.