Thursday, July 22, 2021


Your Celebratory Quote
"It's not like there was something wrong with me or my reporting. There was just something wrong with who I was — a liability to them."
A note from the Writer
Hi,
Sonia’s contract at a local news station wasn’t renewed after multiple dustups with white managers around her race, ethnicity, and immigration status. We celebrate her coming forward publicly to denounce these actions.
For me, there are two main ways to think about the equity gap. One is to blame women and historically marginalized people for some sort of strange inherent inferiority. The other is to acknowledge the systems and structures that continue to hold people like Sonia back from fair wages, wealth, and opportunity. Fixing these inequitable systems are essential to a fair and healthy future for all Americans.
-Darein
FEATURED
Diverse Bodies Aren’t Enough
Last week we talked about systemic racism and the wage gap as it relates to new research from the Brookings Institute.
Here is a chart.
White non-college educated workers in manufacturing make $875 more than Black college educated workers. This is a fantastic proof point for our feature - diverse bodies do not mean systemic racism is automatically fixed. In fact, bringing diverse people into racist economic systems can cause long-term harm to their accumulation of wealth. The uncomfortable conversation comes when we talk about money and power within the structure of a department, an organization, an industry, or an economy. Our American domestic economy.
The longer this conversation is delayed, the more women and historically marginalized groups bear the mental and financial costs of compounding disparities that hold them back from closing the wealth, wage, and poverty gaps.
For example, NPR reported that over one year, a Denver TV station fired three Latina journalists. This case contains the trifecta: pressure to diversify on-air talent, hires in response to that pressure, and adverse impact to the journalists hired.
All three journalists had spoken to powerful, white station managers about including Latinx/a/o and other underrepresented voices in their coverage. One journalist, Sonia Guitierrez says,” ...she was told that she could report on immigration, an issue about which she cares deeply, but only if she were to state her own immigration status on air in every story on the subject. ‘I was put in a box simply for who I am,’ Gutierrez says. ‘It is racist to require a Latino reporter, a Hispanic reporter, to disclose their own immigration status [to viewers] before reporting on immigration,’ says Julio-César Chávez, the association's vice president.”
The company’s response? We won’t comment further on personnel issues.
You can imagine how difficult it would be for those journalists to gain restitution without reprisal from the journalism and media industries.
Uphill Battles
Sometimes entrepreneurs have to change an entire industry and this is obviously an uphill battle. One Asian American Chef stated, “‘Growing up, we never felt seen by this ‘ethnic’ aisle in mainstream grocery stores.’” While chili oil and fish oil availability have improved as chefs have proven product viability, there is still only one south asian achaar brand on supermarket shelves.
In academia, Mary Helen Washington was and is a trailblazer. She came of age in the publishing industry when there were literally no Black female American authors. A group of radical women, including Toni Morrison, helped her along the path as a writer and in this wonderful conversation, she speaks with her mentee and colleague Shaun Myers about the struggles of Black women in academia and publishing from the 1970s to now.
Nicole Hannah-Jones recently joined the teaching faculty at Howard University after initially being denied tenure at her alma mater, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. A recent article quote from the Grio stated, “It is Hannah-Jones’ hope that PWIs get exposed for their prejudiced practices after this incident, in order to liberate other Black academics who are marginalized and get denied tenure. ‘They like to put us in there in their brochures to show how diverse they are, but then they don’t treat us fairly through the process.’”
But this is a progressive space
Recently, Alexi McGill took over the helm of Planned Parenthood. McGill has served Planned Parenthood in a number of capacities before becoming President, including Board Chair. You might think Planned Parenthood has long centered social equity in its organization practices but a fantastic Elle interview quote from McGill states otherwise. “To be able to say, ‘We’re going to talk about race, about intersectionality, about Margaret Sanger?’ McGill Johnson says. ‘We are going to do the things that we have always known are central to our work and our mission, but we thought we had to organize the support first in order to get them done.’”
Actions for You
On a personal level, I try to support art, entertainment and institutions that have publicly committed to equity. If you are a person of power at work, carefully consider when, where, and how to push your organization on issues of equity. See if you can find community with others who also advocate for equity. As shown above, repercussions for speaking out are real but it is important to find ways to move the conversation forward and center the system and institutional changes needed to truly move us forward.
ARTICLES
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Sensationalizing Crime Statistics
If you are a regular local or cable news watcher, you may have seen alarms about crime rates. Whenever we see those alarms we immediately ask some questions. Crime is often sensationalized in ways that are harmful to BIPOC communities.
Lois Beckett at The Guardian recently did an analysis and found, “what’s happening with homicides is not part of some broader ‘crime wave.’ In fact, many crimes, from larcenies to robberies to rape, dropped during the pandemic, and continued to fall during the first few months of 2021.”
So what is the root cause of this crime wave you ask? Well homicides are up in historically redlined neighborhoods that are majority black and brown. You guessed it, systemic racism.
Crime or Public Health Epidemic?
A point of writer's privilege. For me, it is clear that these homicides are a public health issue and should be treated as such. What kind of systemic and structural change would be required to truly solve homicides in historically disinvested areas? I am sure we could start with deep pocketed programmatic investments in on-the-ground nonprofit institutions.
A great piece from Ray Suarez at The Current Georgia talks about how county officials are handling white male suicides as a public health issue and if we replace the white men in these counties with the young Black and brown youth suffering in inner cities, we will find two sides of the same coin.
SHOUT OUTS
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ACLU Keeps Up Fight
Shout out to the lawyers at ACLU!
BREAKING: Arkansas’s trans health ban has been BLOCKED by the court. We won’t rest until this cruel and unconstitutional law has been struck down for good. #Arnews pic.twitter.com/kNXsWvD9Pw
— ACLU of Arkansas (@ArkansasACLU) July 21, 2021
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Trans + Sports Illustrated
Leyna Bloom becomes the first trans model to the featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
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Gay + NHL
Luke Prokop comes out as an openly gay active NHL player.

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