In Black America; National Association Of Black Journalists Dallas Fort-Worth/ABC with George E. Curry ; Part 2

Thank you! From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. While it was going up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, we had those Dick and Jane books. Dick with white, Jane with white, even dog spot with white. So this is the context.

That in South Carolina, it was illegal, first of all, throughout the columnist to teach African Americans to read. That's why I have no patience with kids who don't read today. In fact, in South Carolina, the violence of violence in the law was 100 pounds, which was higher than the pillowcase for killing the runaway slaves. Think about that. Teaching a slave to read or write was more threatening than slaves. Now, this is not ancient history. Think back to my own life. Now, I turned 50. I used to tell people I'm approaching 40, but I wouldn't tell them in which direction. But in my lifetime, when I was a senior in high school, we had separate water fountain. Mark, white, and color.

This was not something I saw on eyes, and probably you had it right here in Texas as well. And lose them in Oklahoma throughout the summer. George E. Curry, editor in chief, Emerge Magazine. Last March, a Dallas Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators hosted the National Association of Black Journalists, Region 7 annual conference. More than 300 media professionals, journalism educators, communicators, and students from Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma gathered for four days to rededicate themselves in ABJ and the fourth and fifth estates. The conference theme was entitled Committed to the Cause. Those who attended had an opportunity to participate in a town hall meeting, professional development workshops, and seminars. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr., and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, in ABJ's Region 7 conference with George E. Curry, editor in chief, Emerge Magazine, part two, in Black America. I think the thing inspired me to go in journalism when I would read my newspaper, a little

sorry, Tuscaloosa news, couldn't get a job there, but could get a job at Sports Illustrator. A lot of sports magazines in the country, but couldn't get a job at my hometown newspaper. And I would look at the ass, and they would say, color bus boy wanted. Quite Christian lady wants room mate, and they had to segregate it wide, and YMCA's, and schools, and churches. But let's move forward. We don't have to talk about my lifetime. We don't have to talk about the founding fathers. I'm going to give you a little quiz here. I'm going to throw out some names and give no explanation. And when I finish this, you think there's no such thing as racism, then you can just leave right now. Bensonhurst. Forsyth County, Georgia. Randolph County, Alabama. Willie Horton. Rodney King.

Charles Stewart. Susan Smith. Dennis. The Bureau of Alcohol to Back on Fire on. Texaco. Avis. All state. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. St. Petersburg, Florida. You think race is not a problem? Bill Bradley said race is America's original sin, and race remains its unresolved dilemma. The National Association of Black Journalists is the largest media organization for people of color in the world. It has over 5,000 media professionals throughout this country and the world. There are 69 affiliated professional chapters and 41 student chapters. Lance Marching, Dallas, Texas, the Dallas Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators, holds it the annual Region 7 Conference of the National Association of Black Journalists.

The conference brought together students, working journalists from radio, television, and print, journalism educators, and media executives to explore and discuss issues that influence the dissemination of news and public affairs programming. One of the highlights of this year's conference was the presentation given by George E. Curry, Editor-in-Chief of Emerge Magazine. In Black America, spoke with him following his presentation. I think the major chain has been the commitment of major news outlets to covering us. It used to be a time that they provided thoughtful, sensitive coverage, more of it, particularly even today's news. News we can still better than time. And now we're kind of all a fashion, and the conservatives are in, and so that's a little coverage there. So I find it appalling. Also, when I don't mind emitting this, I think that some of the kinds of journalists that are hiring who are African-Americans are now quite different from when we came into business. They're African-American journalists who come in who group in the suburb, really don't have anything to do with the inner city, don't want to run around behind black people, don't want to go to housing projects, yet they want to say they're journalists.

And I don't think you have to apologize for that. If you can't bring that to the table, it's not going to get covered. I don't think anybody should be limited by that or afraid to cover it. And you're opinion, what are some of the pressing issues that are occurring in Black America? Well, they haven't changed really over the year when you talk about economic development, talk about racism, and you talk about the lack of adequate housing. True welfare reform is also missing, and they stop being used as political fathers, fought about politician. They really haven't changed that much, but there's been no real commitment to it. The economics controversy. If there's a controversy at all there. Well, to me, this is another example of some people using Black people for entertainment value. As a side show, we always a side show for somebody else. Fact of the matter is, in Texas, in Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, in every other southern state, we've had African-American teachers teach us with poor education facilities, with poor books, with limited budget. They've managed to teach us, because they believe that we could achieve.

To me, economics is, however, I understand the real intention of Oakland school system. It's a cop out, because basically you're saying we can't teach our kids the way they are, and I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I mentioned in my interest note to this month that it's like playing baseball. You know, if you're playing baseball, you want to score, and I want to profile something different. But if you want to score, you've got to go to first base. That's what they call a first base. There's no good to go leave home, play, go to third base, and then start, say, boy, I hit a triple. And I think this is what this is all about. And I think we need to go to first base, understand it. That's the way the ballgame played, whether you like it or not, that's the only way you're on school. For the last couple of years, the Merge has published the 50 worst NC28 Division I colleges and their graduation rates of African-American athletes. We as a people, why aren't we outraged to the fact that they take our young kids in, these universities make these billions of dollars and the athletes are left basically with nothing, and definitely not in education.

I mean, quite a few of them all, from Texas, as always, I managed to be on our list. And you look at the graduation rate, and you see the disparity, like it coming up in our next issue, we've got it for track. The meal track, Stanford has a 100% graduation rate for white athletes in that area, African-American zero, 100% to zero. You can't explain that. And so we should be our region. I hope people use it as a guide, particularly parents when we're talking about allowing them kids to go out, to go to college, and know that you're going to get an education out of it. And even with those graduation rates, we get them six years, we don't use four. We get them six years, we use their data that they supplied to the NCAA, so they can't say it's wrong, it's their information. But this is a problem across the country. Richard did not go up in Harlem. He grew up in Long Island, Roosevelt. A lot of these rappers grew up in white play. They didn't go up in Harlem. They didn't go up in Brooklyn. So they're playing to these images. And now we have our kids trying to play out these roles, while everybody else is making money.

And so we got to redefine this. And this is part of a larger struggle. A struggle for who will define our leaders? I got into it with Ed Koch. I was at Columbia University. Ed Koch said he'd like my cover if we don't cleanse Thomas in. And he said he'd like it. And I told him I didn't give three damn about what he'd like it or not. I am not right for Ed Koch. I am right for my people. That's why we say black American news magazine. We say white American news magazine. That's why we have BET. We call it white WET. I'm not going to apologize for that. And he could have the speech touches on these brain dig Negro conservatives saying that if JC Watts couldn't apologize to Jesse Jackson, emerged can apologize to clans Thomas. Now I don't know how many y'all heard on these stories, but my answer was and continues to be.

He has a better chance to find a virgin and a maternity ward to give me the apologize clans Thomas. I don't apologize when I'm right. And I don't back down when I'm right. And I don't let other people decide for me who should represent me. And they want to give this funny argument about the that should be diversity in the black community. You're right. It is diversity. But these handpicked people nobody ever heard of, no war to Connolly. And these people nobody heard of them to carry their water. I'm supposed to accept them as my leader. I don't think so. I don't play that. I will decide for myself who my leaders are. And this is a fake argument like we want diversity on Supreme Court. White folks got eight out of nine seats. And if I had eight seats, I would give you diversity. But I got one. Don't help that. How can I get diversity?

When you got somebody who lied and say he would represent black people when he was there. You have somebody who can say it or he objects to a high-tech lynching. When in fact, had he gone back to Georgia not that long ago, he would have gotten an old fashion lynching had he gone with his wife. So those are the issues about clans times. And they want to say like they have a monopoly on family values. I don't think so. After the Americans are very conservative on a lot of things. We believe in family values. We believe and boy, don't go into some neighborhood and have a poll on death penalty. They'll kill you and dig you up and kill you again. But we are not conservative on civil rights. And the difference between these clans today and the old line black Republicans like Arthur Fletcher and Bill Coleman is that they never sold out. That they maintain that we're entitled to civil rights. And this new bunch, you ought to see you can buy them, you can lease them.

And counsel the lease. And it doesn't stop there. We have to decide who our heroes and our she-roes are going to be. And that's not OJ Simpson. And it also means that you don't just embrace people and bring them back when they mess over the whole community. OJ had nothing to do with us. Nothing. He can just have a white wife, shed to be white, blonde, and blue eyes. And Michael Jackson. Another confused one. I remember Michael when he had a black nose. I remember that. And I ain't got a scared curl. Cut off half his face. And talking about that man in the mirror. What man? He's a first black boy who want to go up to Bill White woman in the mirror. And, and your athlete say, I'm going to talk about them too. Charles Barclay. You'll be love it. Republican. Said he's not a role model. I agree with him on that.

Y'all great image Smith, another Republican. I know her, but I don't like the rest easy to so don't let me start about them. I call him the red next. Look, we have great athletes. We have great entertainers, but that's all they are. That's all they are. My role model is not these stupid athletes who can't spell letter A. My role model is my mama. My big mama. My teachers. My craze of cultures. My ministers. People who would never be on TV. Those are our role models and those of the people we should elevate, not people who turn their back on our community. You can't blame white folks for that. That's what we have to do.

And we have to be careful about our language. Who we are journalists, adopting language that we would never have used 20 years ago. We're talking about our young kids. They are at risk. At risk of what? You walk out here. Just how are you at risk? Getting hit by a bus. You at risk. While he's from a broken home. Home's fine. The people inside broke. So give him some money. You saw that one. Well, his father wasn't home. Well, my wife wasn't either. And good, he wasn't. Just met a brother that I had two years ago. Right here in Dallas. Good, thank God. He wasn't there. Wish he had left sooner. Don't tell me about daddy ain't being home. They're going to stop you from achieving. Because you're daddy at home. You're in good company. It was a rare mine. Pog and project daddy weren't there. We know people had dead.

You look in history. Frederick Douglass. Guess what? His daddy wasn't there. I think he did all right. W. B. Du Bois. My hero. His father left when he was 11 years old. Great barracks of Massachusetts. I think he did all right. Malcolm X. Father died when he was four years old. I think he did all right. And Jack Robinson. He broke the collar line. Fifty years ago this April. Never met his father. So don't tell our kids about. They can't be successful. Because their dad is not home. So what? Tell them about the kids and the people who have been successful father left. Those are the kind of message that we have to impart to our youth. And finally, I just want to say, I'm going to say lastly. I'm not like Jesse. Jesse will say lastly than going for another 15 minutes.

We got to be prepared for these attacks on our community, attacks on our integrity, attacks on us as individuals. That's going to continue. What you saw in California with Prop 209 will spread to the rest of this country. They've already tried to have a ballot initiative in Colorado. And what you're going to see particularly in this whole field of affirmative action is that they are going to try to separate the white women. This is what they did in Colorado from people of color. So they can defeat these things much easier. See, no doubt they had something going. They said, oh, we're against affirmative action. They had to realize that white women benefit from affirmative action more than anybody else. Kind of hard to set it to your wife and your daughter that we are against affirmative action. Usually the first thing you do is put a black face to something you want to feed it. And so it didn't work so we can look for that kind of thing. Now also means you got to know what you're talking about. I was telling the kids other night, you got to be twice as good for half the credit that hasn't changed.

So when you talk about affirmative action, you got to know what you're talking about. You got to say we need affirmative action because we have so much negative action. That's why we need it. And you'll hear the terms of cold word. Well, we're talking about preferences. Well, I was at Knoxville College, a little black college. And I learned that you want to know the definition of where to go to the root. The root word preferences prefer. You name me one person in America if they could prefer to wake up in the morning black. So we're not talking about preferences. All that be a long line of people to be there. What we're talking about is given people a chance who've been excluded. And you'll hear the words like preferences or quotas to cloudy the issue. If you're a salesperson, you said quotas. Oh, you won't be in business. You never got this. Have quotas. And you better meet or you go. But it only is a problem when it applies to people of color and women. And I'm not going to be allowed myself to be defined that way. Because if you want to talk about preferences, I'll tell you when I give up affirmative action.

The largest preference program in this country is alumni preference. Where the sons and daughters with alumni can go to college because their mama and dad went. And it says neither of my parents, friends, high school, I wouldn't be in that crowd. And certainly you don't have the money to go there because my family's so poor. But my mama's slice to ham was so thin that it had one side. So I know I couldn't go. We were too poor to go winter shopping. You know what I mean? That's not my crowd. So you have Harvard, for example, if you apply for Harvard on alumni preference, 40% chance of getting admitted. But if you come from background like mine, 15% chance of admitted Harvard. Worst in that, the SAT scores of these alumni preference people, 35 points lower. You don't hear the white people saying they've been stigmatized, do you? At Harvard. If that's what you call stigmatized, stigmatized me.

As a colon policy, if you were about being stigmatized, get an A instead of a C. They'll get rid of that. But they don't talk about that. They don't talk about those kind of preferences. A preference to get these athletes in. And who's a Hollywood Henderson, you used to say, can spell cat if you spotted in the C in the A. But they go and make millions of dollars for these universities, the University of Texas, Houston. Oh yeah, I read about it a long time. And they don't graduate, they quit your rate. Which is why we have bottom 50 in the Merge magazine. Everybody else talking about the top 20. I want to talk about why we got this in our upcoming issue. Why Stanford University, one of the best universities in this country, can always explain to me why my track team, after the American males, and graduate at 0%. Quite 100%. Explain that to me because that's their numbers that they reported to the NCAA. They've been exploited and they have this other thing, geographic preference.

And make sure everybody doesn't come from Texas, they give you preference to another party. Oh, kind of preference system. The bottom line is this. More students go to the 10 most elite universities country on the alumni preference than all African Americans and Hispanics come by. So when they want to give up that preference program, I'll give up these little crumbs that we got on affirmative action. The bottom line is white males make up 41% of the population, 46% of the workforce, and 95% of the top jobs, corporate jobs, and corporate America. If what are they crying about, anger, white male, I'm the one who ought to be angry. So we have a long road ahead of us. We have a lot of things to do for our community, and we sure better know who and how we are. Those old blue suns at Harvard and messed up black people than bad whiskey.

I'm attempting to apply to the journalism because if we don't do it, who's going to do it? If we survive slavery, we can survive Newton. All right. It's no time to give up. Native Americans are talking about immigration, all the immigrants. If you're not a Native American, we all immigrants. Native Americans were here, took their land, put them on the reservation. Excuse me. Take over your land. I came to discover your dumb crystal. I came to discover you. You better discover your butt out of here. I don't want to be discovered. No, thank you. That's our challenge. Jake Gator, former football coach at Florida A&M, Sheryl School, talks about the time you were playing Gremlin. I'll have a punchline show. But they ain't one in a long time, okay? I was only serious. So family was playing Gremlin, and there were two drunks in the stands next to Jake's wife.

And that family was behind by four points. And the quarterback dropped back, and I just played quarterback college, so I know what to play. He dropped back. He did a draw, draw a draw play. One of the drunks said, he knows the same player we're called. He said, same player, same player. So he went back the next time, did a screen pass, the other drunks said, he knows the same player we're called, the same player. So found his fourth and goal on a two-yard line. Last player game, one second on the club. Jake Gator, wife looked at the drunks and said, look, you've been talking all day. Now, what play would you call now? Drunks said, hey, I got this further. Jake, take over now. We've gotten this first time for us to take over. The contributing editors that you have writing stories, how do you go about attracting, or you just have an industry of ideas. I have a lot of family, 27 years of long-time business, and there was a time you knew almost everybody.

Now, half of these kids are here, my former students. It's hard to get into marriage because we're very competitive right more than one syllable, and I demand a certain quality of writing. And there are some friends of mine who tried to work for the merchant and haven't been in make it. I've had reports from New York Times to turn their story and get it thrown back because they didn't give me that best work. And I said, if you wouldn't turn it into New York Times, why would you give it to us? And so we just demand those kinds of standards, and that's what I'm always doing. That's why I'm able to be consistent. You've recently edited a book entitled The Furniture Baction in Debate. Why wasn't it important that George Currie contribute to this particular train of thought? Well, I think that one is an issue that's been mystifying by our people. And we allow others to call it quotas of preference when it's not that. I mean, even the executive order creating front of action, specifically for big quotas. But people want to still mystify it out there and mistate the facts.

And so I wanted to put the facts out there so we can be armed with information. And people think they know what a front of action is. They don't know the history. They don't know the arguments even. And so I want to get rid of it. And I also wanted to debate on all sides. So people can decide for themselves what's the strongest and weakest arguments. And so I'm a real pleased with that. What's it like living in Washington, D.C. in an African-American town? And some of the things that go on in Washington, D.C. are not to the betterment and to a certain certain to the detriment of African-American. It is frustrating. And it's not unique to Washington. You know, a lot of times when these black males become takeover cities, it's after all the whites have moved out. After all the money is going out to the city pot. And then they expected to perform miracles. You find a lot of major cities where the poverty rate hasn't gone down cause an African-American mayor is there. And so that's disturbing. But I think what's important is I think we put it over some politics. And we use it understandably because it was an outlet that we could use at the time. But we have just got enough on the economic part. And I really think that two things.

One, in terms of politically, the action is being shifted to the state and local level. Because that's the new federalism. And that's where we should have put our emphasis. And I spend so much time out of Washington and really increase our vigilance at the state and local level. The other thing is we have to really look at economic development as our primary mission right now. Because it's very clear to me that we're going to have to clean this mess. And if we, as a group, have 400 B in the other year, we can make better use of it. Well, of course, is there a life app to BT and the Merge magazine, some of your other interests? You know how the people ask me all along. I think I plan to lead the tribune at some point. And I just probably write books full of times. But being the editor of the Merge magazine to me is the best job in the world. I have absolutely no plans to leave right now. I'm excited about it. I've now been in this house for years. And I want to make it consistent and make it better and make it bigger. And now this is it for me. I mean, I've enjoyed the experiences I had covering a White House and going to be depopit the Vatican and covering Jesse Jackson campaign. But to be able to shape a magazine from top to bottom, the image that it has while people and highlight issues that others will not, is very satisfying.

George E. Curry, editor-in-chief, Emerge magazine. If you have any questions or comments or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, write us. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Alvarez. I'm Johnny O'Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. And please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes. Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network.

I'm Johnny O'Hanson, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America. To be able to shape a magazine from top to bottom, the image that it has while people and highlight issues that others will not interpret. NABJ's Region 7 Conference with George E. Curry, part 2 this week on in Black America.