Back in the heady days of the 2008 election, things were different. Not that different, mind you, but the news shows, dayside broadcasts and marathon primary night-panels had a pretty decent level of diversity. Already recognizable faces like Donna Brazile, Amy Holmes, Eugene Robinson, Juan Williams, and Roland Martin were joined by newcomers Joe Watkins, Keli Goff, Marc Lamont Hill, Michelle Bernard, and Jamal Simmons. Back in January 2009, I wrote on this site: “If 2009 isn’t the year of the black media star, then we are all doing something wrong.” Clearly I was very, very wrong
Rachel Sklar via, uh, The Daily Beast
it’s hilarious, because I SWEAR i got on tumblr and was like I am not gonna be doing too much race commentary. I haven’t even made tags for my pet rocks named “race” and “assimilation”. No, no, I was gonna do a leeeetle bit of hip hop work/contributing, but otherwise plan to stay lurking on the tumblrs with nudie pics. But jeez-louize if any little stroll on the internet doesn’t lead you to silly speculation, or ethno-beef, or just folks preaching to the choir-e… only to cap off with another white lady telling white people about an apparent white problem…. sigh, I’m exhausted. all cried out over the beloved freedom
This type of commentary is how I got in the game in the first place. Even then I had to use italics and airquotes around this “shocking!” notion of a lilly-white magazine cabal. one which has held court in cable news and the www,(shhhh)
I do think it’s actually less of a story, at least in this broad sense. Some things just take time. A lot of the ethnocultural status quo is a result of waiting for other issues to reconcile. Who cares about Black cable news people when cable news is mostly a petrified poop relic anyway? Maybe what they say is true: smart minorities/”others”/anyone who cares about their creativity/$$ ratio are better off in more creative fields.
And none of this is impugning Rachel. Absolutely no immigrant negro gay-alien, or any other disenfranchised species, deserves Rachel’s job over her. She does it to death. She’s also all over the comedy gap, another longstanding boyshorts-of-thorns for women. Someone’s gotta do the documenting and keeping tabs while the rest of us keep our nose to the grind and STRIVE! with whatever tools we get to play with. But yeah, tired…
