Race is the “great conundrum of human existence,” Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. said Thursday during the School of Journalism and Communication’s 31st annual Ruhl Lecture.
Race is hard for the black person who has been oppressed, hated and marginalized in his or her life, he said.
Race is hard for the white person who will be called a racist no matter what he or she does, he said.
He said diversity is often used as a “distasteful catch phrase that we are to aspire to if we wish to consider ourselves enlightened.” It is not necessarily something Americans embrace without feeling pressure to behave in a politically correct manner.
Nevertheless, he said, it is important.
“Diversity is like broccoli,” he said. Seeking it is “not only moral and right, but also practical and right.”
Pitts urged journalists to listen to the stories people have to tell. He proposed that the job of journalists is to tell stories, dispel stereotypes and dismiss fear. Pitts said journalists need to accept the responsibility that comes with the authority; and by doing so, create respected morals.
“A lot of what Pitts said about diversity rings true at the University,” said Journalism student Kevin Glenn. “The topic of diversity should be addressed more thoroughly with young journalists.”
The Ruhl Symposium brings successful speakers to campus to speak about issues facing modern journalists. In his lecture, titled “A Legacy of Drums,” Pitts metaphorically described the African drums brought to America in the time of slavery as journalistic stories. The drum was the way Africans told the stories that reminded them of who they were, and journalists today serve as gatekeepers who determine which drums are heard.
Because of this, the media have a greater responsibility to tell everyone’s story, but they haven’t done that very well, he said.
He used www.yforum.com, a site where people can anonymously ask race-related questions that may be offensive or obvious, as evidence of the media’s inadequate telling of non-whites’ stories.
Pitts said despite many of the odd questions on the site such as, “Is it true that black people have an extra muscle in their calves?” the most telling question about American society is among the first posts the site ever received: It asked what an African-American household was like on a typical night.
People have a desire to break down their ignorance and learn about each other, but they’re too afraid to ask, he said.
“What does this tell you about the job the media has done (in telling peoples’ stories)?” he asked.
Before Pitts delved into issues of race and society, he briefly told the audience his life story.
He talk about how he knew he wanted to be a writer by the age of five, how he was labeled as a gifted student a few years later and how he enrolled in college at the age of 15. He began writing freelance stories for SOUL, a national black entertainment tabloid, at the age of 18 and became its editor two years later. He was hired as a music critic at The Miami Herald 15 years after that and is now a nationally syndicated columnist.
Pitts won a Pulitzer Prize for column writing in 2004, after which someone sent him an e-mail saying the award must have been the “affirmative-action” Pulitzer, and that the award had been devalued as a result of his winning.
Pitts told of a column he wrote about the torture of a 14-year-old black boy who was beaten and suffocated by a school guard who pinched his nose shut and stuffed an ammonia soaked rag in his mouth. Someone sent him an e-mail saying the guard “did us all a favor.”
He said he couldn’t believe that people could write such hateful things and sign their names to them.
He said not a day goes by when someone doesn’t look at him and think they already know everything about him.
“You cannot know my story unless I tell you,” he said. “You cannot know anything by looking.”
He said, “These are the stories we should tell. These are the drums we should be beating.”
“If (Pitts) prompts one journalism student today to ask someone their story, it will all be worthwhile,” said Professor Kathy Campbell.
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