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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #02-98 Beyond Racial Images and Stereotypes
January 14, 1998

Program description and guest contact information at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9802.html

Norman: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. I'm Norman Solomon.

Images of people are everywhere: on billboards, in newspapers and magazines, on TV and radio, and in our minds. We make assumptions, often without thinking about them. Today on Making Contact we're going to look at how members of a white majority can, as a matter of routine, discount the experiences and perspectives of minorities; and we'll also talk about some positive steps that are under way to widen public discussion.

With me in studio, are two people who've been exploring these concerns for many years. Emil Guillermo, formerly the host of NPR's "All Things Considered", is an independent journalist and broadcaster. He is based in the San Francisco Bay area, and he syndicates a column nationally. Emil, welcome to Making Contact.

Emil Guillermo: My pleasure being here Norman.

Norman Solomon: And also with us is, Makani Themba, a long-time activist, who's currently co-director of the Praxis Project, a research and advocacy group. Makani, welcome to Making Contact.

Makani Themba: Thanks for having me.

Norman Solomon: Well, let's start with images and media images of credibility or lack of credibility based on race and ethnic backgrounds. Makani, here we are in early 1998, more than a year has gone by since the height of that uproar over the series in the San Jose Mercury News. The one that laid out information about involvement of the CIA based contras in the trafficking of cocaine, that turned crack around the country through Los Angeles and other cities during the 1980's. At this point, what stands out about the media coverage of that controversy for you?

Makani Themba: Well, I think it was a couple things. First, I was in some ways amazed, and it's hard to be amazed by a sort of race in the media. You think you've seen it all, then all of a sudden, wham, something new! I was shocked at how newspapers got away with saying things like, "black people being generally paranoid." That totally shocked me. So people talk about this crack and CIA case, and you would have, you know, witnesses and folks and evidence and documentation. Regardless of what you thought about the story, that there was definitely documentation, and then folks write these stories and say, "you know, black people have always been paranoid. Generally, they've always had problems with facts." I mean the kind of stereotyping and the kind of defamation that if applied to - I don't know, whoever you can think of would - it would be considered completely degrading and denigrating. That in this context it just sort of floated as policy. It was quite appalling.

Norman Solomon: It should be said that that kind of stereotyping was not confined to the so called conservative pundits. For instance-

Makani Themba: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And that was the thing. People who folks thought, "well, they are on our side." What it said for me was not only about how race operates in this country and how easy it is to discount people and their experiences, but also the magnitude of the story. That you had sort of this unified choir of opposition to the story that was so swift and that they used every tool at their disposal, including just - entire defamation of a people's experience, because, I think, one of the most important things to remember that when the crack and CIA story unfolded you also had the work-fare policies unfolding and all these other things. That all of a sudden for a lot of folks it said, "oh wow, is that how this happened? Is that how crack happened? Cause we were trying to figure it out." All a sudden our communities looked one way and then, blam!, they looked another way. They were devastated within a matter of five years. We couldn't figure out, you know, unemployment hadn't done it to us before, this hadn't done it to us before, but crack did this to us in ways we can't really understand. And for the first time a lot of African-Americans, in particular, had an explanation. And their was this unified sort of choir said, "No. You can't blame this on any institution stuff; it's really about you. You guys are paranoid. You guys are weak people who can't keep a job and basically, you have problems." And that is what the story is.

Norman Solomon: Taking it in sequence, the Mercury News series was published in August of 1996, and it kind of brewed for awhile on talk radio and Internet until it got so large that national mass media began to deal with it in late September of 1996; and then to kind of give a flavor of what the media environment was like nationally by late October of 1996 there was a quote from a liberal syndicated columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, October 24, 1996, quote: "Both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have taken a look at the allegations and found then baseless". And then another quote from Richard Cohen. He said, and again quote: "A piece of black America remains hospitable to the most bizarre rumors and myths. The one about the CIA and crack being just one."

Makani Themba: That - I think that's a classic example. And I think - to me it's very interesting, because when you think about the kinds of sort of myths that, supposedly, black people have been hospitable to include things like the Tuskugee experiment, which was now an HBO movie and becomes this whole other sort of story; but that was one of the things - one of the phenomenon that black folks would talk about and people would say, "oh you know, you guys are crazy. The government wouldn't actually be, you know, letting people drop dead of syphilis. This wouldn't happen." And then eventually, it sort of came out, then it becomes a movie and then people go, "oh my god!". And maybe 60 years from now, there will be an HBO movie about this starring whoever special, important, and famous as a celebrity, and then people will go, "oh my god!". You know , "What happened? And how could they let it happen?" Which is I think part of it, but it does go back to the point that the news is the official story, and that what folks did, what these institutions did in very artfully, was to take the official story, to organize it in ways that gave people impression that whatever they thought, whatever facts or documentation they saw for themselves when they went on-line and went on the Internet, which was what was really different about this story. It was right there and it was a daily mainstream paper that had put it together. Didn't matter. Because the bottom line is that whatever you think, it's wrong. That those - you really are the stereotype, and that everything that is wrong with you is your fault.

Norman Solomon: Of course, enormous pressure was brought to bear on the San Jose Mercury News, which by the spring of 1997 had through its executive editor issued at least a partial retraction. Following through the chronology here, at the end of 1997, in December, the CIA issued a report exonerating itself on the issue of its involvement in trafficking in cocaine that became crack in US cities; and at the very end of '97, the writer Earl Afari Hutchinson wrote a commentary piece - he's the author of the book "The Assassination of the Black Male Image" - and I'd like to quote from Hutchinson's article here.

He said, "The new CIA report absolving itself of the charge that it pumped cocaine to black neighborhood of Los Angeles to financed its contra war in Nicaragua underscores the danger of having a government agency investigate itself. Ex-CIA operatives who plotted the war have blasted the report as shoddy and superficial. They claim the CIA investigator did not ask them the right questions or asked no questions at all, and that the sole intent was to wipe any taint of scandal off the agency. The irony is that Gary Webb, who broke the story in the San Jose Mercury News in August, 1996, never explicitly charged that CIA officials directly conspired to, let alone approved heaping drugs into LA's black neighborhoods. Webb made a compelling case that after Congress cut off funds to the contras, in the early 1980's, key operatives within one of the contra factions, organized and bankrolled by the CIA, briefly supplied cocaine to black drug dealer Ricky Ross, in Los Angeles, to raise money for weapons and equipment to keep their illegal war in Nicaragua going." And in this article, Earl Afari Hutchinson goes on to say, "while there was no smoking gun proof of direct government conspiracy to dope up black communities, Webb's allegations were enough to suggest that some CIA connected operatives at least turned a blind eye to dirty deals."

Well, Makani Themba, what do you make of those distinctions between the CIA having helped the contras and that a contra faction then was involved with drug dealing compared to what was sometimes posited by the mass media that either the CIA was directly dealing or there was no problem.

Makani Themba: Well, I think that was really the question. And I know - I've been interviewed many times on the issue and invariably reporters would say, "well, did the CIA deal drugs?". Well, there's no evidence of that, but if they helped then that should be problematic. This is our tax money. We are concerned about what happened. And it was like, "well we don't want to talk about that." It's either smoking gun or not hand them the gun, not, you know, buy the gun. Now, of course, if that was any, you know, brother on the street who aided and abetted in the crime would be in prison. But, I mean, but the bottom line I think is that there are people who think that stereotypes, and this kind of image defamation has no impact on this. That that thing is sort of light-weight. We have to deal with the real issues. But what folks have to really understand is that this kind of stereotyping enables these things to happen; and for folks to go, "well, it's OK, because those people do that anyway. Those people do those things to themselves." And I think that sort of the result of all of this together: the defamation, the stereotyping, the piles and piles of stories on urban unrest and disaster that had no coverage of the roots and the fundamental causes of the problems, but just the sort of blossoms, if you will, of what happened all led to the ability of people to dismiss this. It's not just, you know, one story or one series, but it is the whole thing all together that completely works to operate against people having any kind of institutional perspective as to how the problems happen. And so it's dismissed.

Norman Solomon: Emil Guillermo, you've been a journalist for many years, for decades at this point -

Emil Guillermo: Well, thank you for making me admit that.

Norman Solomon: How do you feel when you hear the kind of discussion Makani and I have had the last few minutes.

Emil Guillermo: Well, it's funny. As I was listening to you talk, I was thinking you know for the CIA-crack story for blacks is sort of similar to the Asian-American campaign finance story and what's happening to Asian-Americans. Because, in the same way that there was people were trying to make connection that the CIA sold drugs, people in the media were out there trying to make the connection that Asian-Americans and Asians - naturalized Americans from Asia - were in cahoots with spies from China, in some kind of espionage thing, and trying to rig elections here in the United States. I mean you want to talk about mainstream columnist who were beating that drum, look to someone - like William Safire, who his premise was that this was some kind of double agent fantasy, the whole campaign finance reform scandal, and that John Wong was working for the Chinese government. And certainly people within the bureaucracy of Washington took the pronouncements of Safire as more than just his fantasy - his double agent fantasy and took it to be something worth spending millions of dollars to investigate. So far, they've found no smoking gun. Asians have been maligned for the last year as both Asians and Asian-Americans have been maligned for being these zealous contributors.

Norman Solomon: Well, all of a sudden in the last year Asian-Americans are worthy of putting on the front pages.

Emil Guillermo: Well, that's true. It's funny. And you want to talk about images, it was actually a year ago last November that the first image of an Asian-American on Newsweek was seen, and it was similar to the kind of portrayal that Time gave O.J. Simpson, when they darkened his image and made him look villainous. There was a black and white image of James Riotti, who is an Asian-American as opposed to an Asian national who was in America. He, I believe was naturalized. And here was this image of James Riotti, of the Lippo Bank, who's accused as - who's name came up implicated in the scandal. He appeared in this black and white photo, darkened to appear as if this villain in this whole scenario as if the main people in politics, President Clinton and the candidate at the time Bob Dole were somehow blameless. They were the good guys in the whole campaign finance fiasco. Meanwhile, James Riotti - his picture dominated that Newsweek cover. So, we've seen a lot of distortion of the image of Asian-Americans within the last, say 16 months.

Norman Solomon: What has been the affect of that, do you think, on Asian-American communities?

Emil Guillermo: Well, I think if the problem has been empowerment all these many years since the Chinese exclusion laws, at the turn of the century, I think the real impact has been to make people turn back underground, to fight back the instinct to try to empower the community. I think a lot of people have become very shy of the press, very shy of the media, very shy of the attention. Of course, there will always be via certain component parts of the community that say now is the time to really stand up and to be counted, but I have to say that overall, I'm sure that there are some people who say, "well, maybe politics isn't worth it in this country." So, I think it's really had a devastating impact on the community of the last 16 months.

Norman Solomon: If you look back to the last 10 or 20 years and reflect on your own experiences you've done - commercial TV news in California and on the east coast, you were the host of All Things Considered on National Public Radio. You're now an independent journalist. What have been some of the differences, if any, of your experiences in those prior roles compared to your role now working as an independent reporter?

Emil Guillermo: Well, as an independent journalist I pretty much have created my own niche and primarily it's been reporting and commenting in the ethnic press. I mean, my work gets in mainstream papers. I primarily talk about Asian-Americans, because as a journalist I see the world - I mean I make no bones about seeing the world from my ethnic perspective. I call myself a Filipino of Asian-American descent or an Asian-American of Filipino descent and I'm in Filipino papers and Asian-American papers. So, I think clearly, I define my role as a what I call a new American, because Asian-Americans are growing in numbers. The census figures show that the so-called minorities will become the majority by the year 2050. Already in California, they're saying it will happen a lot sooner, and by 2015, and certainly in some urban areas of California, it's already happened. The minorities, the so-called minorities, are the majority. So I think the kind of reporting I do now has been to try to fill in the blanks of the mainstream, the kind of media that I've done over the last 15-20 years, where I see the tendency to be - the tendency of the media is to make the news more homogenous, to make the news more - more general, but also to move toward I think what people are - they're moving towards a tendency toward colorblindedness, toward a homogenization or one-size fits all kind of news. And they leave out the fact that there is tremendous diversity. A lot of difference in concerns, in perspectives, in ideologies, and I think that's a bad trend. I mean I think the ethnic press, because of that has become more professional and has tried to bring out those different perspectives. And that's why I think the ethnic media has become a real strong force within the last few years.

Norman Solomon: Okay, and we'll pick up that thread in a minute. That's the voice of Emil Guillermo, a independent journalist and broadcaster; and also we're speaking with Makani Themba, co-director of the Praxis project, which is involved with community research and advocacy. I'm Norman Solomon, and you're listening to Making Contact radio program. We'll return to this discussion in just a minute. If you'd like to receive free background information about the subject we are discussing today, please call us toll-free at 800-529-5736 and give us your mailing address. You can call any time. Again at 800-529-5736. And that number will be repeated at the end of this broadcast. We also like to like to let you know how you can get involved with this program, which is now heard each week on more than 100 stations in the United States and Canada, as well as in other countries around the world.

Well, let's resume our discussion. Both of you, I'd like to ask Makani Themba and Emil Guillermo, what are some of the possibilities in 1998 and beyond for people to organize, to put energy into changing this kind of media stereotyping and imagery that we've been getting for so long?

Emil Guillermo: Well, I think for one, one of the projects I'm involved with now is MCM New California Media. It's a program which is seen primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area now, but we're looking to syndicate it nationally. We're looking to syndicate it throughout California.

Norman Solomon: A TV program?

Emil Guillermo: Right, a television program. So it really is an impressive wide-shot, where you see a black, a Hispanic, maybe a Chinese-American involved in the conversation on these issues moderated by a Filipino guy like myself. I mean, that's an impressive wide-shot, and you don't get that in the media. So I think what people can do - I mean, we formed this program, because we felt that the ethnic media was growing in professionalism, growing in - what's it's reporting on is growing in importance - but we found that there - it needed, it deserved a wider audience than just the communities they were serving. So we formed, pretty much, an ad hoc network -

Norman Solomon: Now the picture -

Emil Guillermo: - of fifty -

Norman Solomon: The picture is different. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I was going to try to ask you at this point. The picture may differ, but how does the content differ?

Emil Guillermo: Well, the content differs, because our concerns, the things we report about are different, and the depth to which we report about - although the mainstream may cover a story in the same subject, the kind of depth that the mainstream - or the kind of depth the ethnic media gets involved with in a story is far deeper than the mainstream will give it space or time or importance, because they see their audience as this homogenous mix of people, primarily a white audience. So what we do is we bring together, on a weekly basis, editors and writers from 50 to 60 news organizations here in California and we are engaged in a round table discussion on issues. And I think that's one thing that we've done here in the Bay Area, but it's something that people in other areas can do where there is a thriving ethnic media.

Norman Solomon: And I want to let listeners know that if you want to get in touch with Emil Guillermo to find out about this multi-ethnic TV program that's in San Francisco, to see how you might do something in your community along that line, please get something ready to write with, because we'll be giving a 800 number at the end of the program. Again, if you want to get a hold of Emil Guillermo call that number and we'll let you know how.

Makani Themba, when you travel around the country and look at people's concerns around images and media, what do you see if anything that's hopeful that people are trying to do?

Makani Themba: I do want to say that every single time that anybody has organized just about these issues they've won. That's - I think that's really the important point to make. What happens is that people feel powerless and say, "oh god! Look at that gross billboard. That is so offensive. I don't think there can be anything done about it." But what I want to say to people out there is that it gets done all the time. Billboards get taken down, you know, commercials get taken off the air once they hear from you. And I think the most important thing that you can do - write that letter, call, complain. Sometimes call over and over again. Leave 40 voice-mails. Have your cousins call. It does make a difference and people do it all the time. Document it. Call the government. Call the Federal Trade Commission. There are lots of places to call, and they hear you; and there's actually some minor sort of arcane laws that we invoke that make some of this stuff illegal. So, you know, complain all the time. Complain as often as you can. Get it off your chest. You'll feel better, and you'll make a difference.

Norman Solomon: And what kind of organizing actually comes out of these concerns?

Makani Themba: A number of things. One of the things that people traditionally has been to organize, you know, the sort of phone flooding, the faxing, and the billboard work. Some folks have traditionally - actually done teach-ins in news rooms, where they have organized to have a teach-in around those very issues. And what's happening is more and more media outlets, because of this kind of pressure, are having classrooms in their newsrooms to kind of deal with these issues. And as a community group you should be involved, figure out who is doing that work, and talk to them, try to have some impact on the curriculum, have some impact on what's getting taught, and also just write those letters to your editor. Just complain. Just completely - and if you don't like to write, leave a voice-mail message. Leave 20 of them. Have everybody call. And, because they multiply those by a thousand usually and say, "well if 20 people feel this way, 20,000 people must feel this way." They don't have to know that they are your cousins, just do it anyway.

Norman Solomon: If people listening call the 800 number and we let them know how to get hold of you at the Praxis Project, I imagine you might have some ideas specifically on how this could be done.

Makani Themba: Yes, and it also depends on the situation. And we do a lot of work with groups over the phone and on-line. And when I travel a lot and we sit at kitchen tables and essentially plot what makes the most sense. I mean, we did some work in a small town in Georgia that was totally out of control. The newspaper outlet was totally out of control in terms of the way they were portraying the folks who lived there. And the first step that they did was simply to document it, to simply write down every time there was a person of color who was in handcuffs in the newspaper. And what else - and the fact is that that was basically how they were portrayed in the newspaper, even though they were the majority of that community. And with that kind of evidence in hand it was sort of hard to deny that there was a problem. And then the next step was sort of looking at what does this mean. There's other news here. And there are other things of value to cover, besides this sort of - actually relatively low crime rate. You know.

Norman Solomon: Emil Guillermo, when you were at, say, NPR News, what would be the atmosphere in the news room towards people who would make such complaints?

Makani Themba: Well, I think, you know, at first they would say, "well, probably a crank." They'd doubt the credibility. It's a tremendous hurdle to get over, to get over people's skepticism that something is real. I remember trying to get a story about a man who went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight what he felt was discrimination based on accent. I remember fighting for a long time trying to get that story done, but it was very difficult even though I was the host, because people didn't buy into that idea, that notion, that hey this is an important story. I thought it was made to order for radio, because it was a man who had an accent, a very thick one, but once again when you have the news managers who are thinking in terms of this homogenized audience and homogenized news, somehow everything gets sort of whitewashed. And just as an example of the kind of invisibility of people, take, you know, we mentioned some really big stories over the last year, the CIA-crack story, the campaign finance story, what about the death of Johnny Versace and the man who is accused of being the killer, Andrew Cunnanan. Cunnanan was called repeatedly, in all the media, well maybe not all, 98% of the media, he was called white. And even when they were talking to his father, in the Philippines and asking about his background, the media and reporters were still calling, "well, Andrew Cunnanan, white man" and it's because the FBI only saw him only as white. And so here we are, here's the evil twin of Tiger Woods, sort of speak, you know, the flip side of diversity, where someone can be accused of something as heinous as spree killing, and the media, the FBI, no one knows how to describe this guy. He's either black or he's white and everything else, even though it's a matter of accuracy, because we're looking for this guy, or we were, until they found him in the houseboat, and I don't know if they forced him into suicide, but certainly when you have people knocking on your door with the SWAT team, you may be moved to desperate action.

Norman Solomon: And in 10 seconds, an unfair question. Do you feel that the problems are major, or do you see major progress having gone on in the last few years.

Emil Guillermo: Well, when the editors, the newspaper editors in their last big meeting come out and say, "you know those diversity guidelines, in terms of hiring, that we wanted to meet by the year 2000? We're not going to meet them." That's a sure sign that were not close.

Norman Solomon: Emil Guillermo, former host of NPR's All Things Considered, now and independent journalist and broadcaster, and Makani Themba, co-director of the Praxis Project, a research and advocacy group based in Oakland, California, thanks the both of you for being here.

Makani Themba: Thank you.

Emil Guillermo: Thanks Norm.

Norman Solomon: That's about it for this edition of Making Contact. If you'd like a transcript or a tape of today's program or more information about Making Contact, please get something to write with. You'll be hearing our toll-free number in a few moments. Making Contact is an independent production funded by individual contributors. Our producers are David Barsamian, Phillip Babich, and Denise Graab. Our executive director is Peggy Law. To get in touch with our guests or to receive free background information call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. You can also order tapes and transcripts by calling that same number 800-529-5736. Special thanks to Howard Gellman at KQED radio for engineering the program today. This is Norman Solomon. For everyone involved with Making Contact, bye for now.