AFTER DEADLINE
Multicultural or not, inequities continue in our society
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
Last month, I got an opportunity to spend a week thinking more clearly and critically about what I write, unclouded by the frenzy of deadlines.
That week was spent at a journalism seminar on race and ethnicity sponsored by the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, a professional development institution set up at the University of Maryland. About 30 reporters and editors from around the country attended.
Over the course of six days, the group developed a collegial bond, forged by hearing some provocative speakers and engaging in intense discussions — and the simple fact that we liked each other. Thanks to the creation of an e-mail list, the conversation goes on.
We're a pretty diverse bunch, a predictable American mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian. But I was surprised to find out that for many of the journalists, their newsrooms looked nothing like the Knight Center classroom.
Many complain about being one of only a very few minority journalists. On the e-mail list the other day, a reporter of Korean ancestry was venting about a caller assuming she knew another employee for the simple reason that he also was Asian. Another said that when stories dealing with race come up, they're automatically handed to her because she is black.
I counted myself as lucky because multi-ethnicity has been part of the landscape here for a long time. But no matter how self-congratulatory we are about Hawai'i diversity, I came away from the week in Maryland realizing that there are issues of racial bias here I may not pick up because I'm, as we say, haole. Or, maybe I only recognize it when it's about my haole-ness.
I got a call recently from someone giving me the standard how-local-are-you grilling — polite, but pointed questions. Where did I go to school? Where was I born? How long had I lived here? I'm not sure that someone who is not white would have been given the same third degree. People do make assumptions, based on superficial observations.
The seminar drove many of us to take a closer look around when we got home. Our discussion about the racial achievement gaps in education led some of us to apply the same questions to our local communities.
It sparked my own piece about an affirmative-action project for Hawaiians at the University of Hawai'i, where Hawaiians and certain other Asian and Pacific-island ethnic groups are underrepresented. The expert at the seminar, as it turned out, knew all about the Hawai'i achievement gap, more than I could say for myself.
We spent some time talking about a labor-market study at the University of Chicago titled "Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?" It found a bias against interviewing job applicants with names that suggested they were black. Applicants with "Caucasian" names got 50 percent more callbacks on resumes than those with "African-American" names. It made me ponder whether the same thing happens here when Emily and Brendan come up against Corazon and Iosepa.
In particular, the subject of the Patriot Act and the bigotry that arises from the fear of terrorism generated discussion that resonated throughout the seminar group. If anything, wartime again has demonstrated that racial and cultural biases lie just beneath the surface for all of us. The Japanese American Citizens League, during its recent convention here, reminded everyone that World War II home-front history could repeat itself in the wake of 9/11.
And so we all wondered: How much is fear of the unknown poisoning civil liberties in our own neighborhoods? Some of us who cover areas with significant Muslim populations pledged to keep an eye out for clashes between homeland security and civil rights. And beyond the Islamic communities, odds are good that we all know people who have gone to the airport and discovered they'd been placed on a no-fly list.
These are things worth thinking about, for journalists and everyone else. There may be no better time than the unfortunate present for us to re-examine the ideals of a color-blind America, of a melting-pot Hawai'i.
Vicki Viotti covers ethnic issues for The Advertiser. Reach her at 525-8053 or vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com.
