NABJ did something white

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On April 23, 1899, white residents of Georgia gathered in Newnan to take part in one among the best traditions of white America:

They were going to lynch Just the pants.

Hose was a black man who was accused the brutal murder of his employer, the employer’s wife, and the couple’s newborn son. No one cared that Hose had killed his boss by throwing an axe when his employer was about to shoot him for requesting a break day. It didn’t matter that Hose wasn’t tried for the alleged crime. The flash mob didn’t care that the wife and child that Hose was accused of killing were actually alive and unaffected. Back then, black lives didn’t matter. White people didn’t care. To them, lynching black people was normal.

So many lynch mobs flocked to Newnan that the railroad corporations rerouted their trains to accommodate the white flash mob. When they arrived, a whole bunch of normal white adults took turns cutting off pieces of Hose’s limbs, ears, and genitals to maintain as souvenirs, while their normal white children gathered firewood. After a series of routine stabbings, the traditional lynchers doused Hose with regular gasoline, burned him, and sang their normal songs until Hose’s eyes exploded out of his head. Then they went back to their normal homes.

WEB Du Bois was not normal.

He laid the foundations for the study of human behavior that became often called sociology. His brain planted the seeds that might spawn the trendy civil rights movement, African American studies, critical race theory, and even nuclear disarmament. While I personally imagine he’s essentially the most good mind America has ever produced, I have to also admit that my appreciation for his genius pales compared to the most important Du Bois fanboy of all of them:

William Edward Burghardt DuBois.

As one of the eloquent, prolific wordsmiths who ever lived and breathed, Du Bois believed he was uniquely positioned to persuade white people of the error of their ways of lynching them. Since he was in Georgia, teaching at Atlanta University, he placed on his best suit, grabbed his cane, and headed to fulfill with the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Du Bois was going to defeat the normalized racial violence that infected society. He truly believed that white supremacy was no match for facts, scientific data, logic, and, above all, the unique genius of the neatest man alive.

“I didn’t get there,” Du Bois wrote in Dusk of Dawn: An Autobiography of a Race Concept. “Sam Hose had been lynched, they usually said his knuckles were on display in a food market down Mitchell Street, where I used to be walking. I turned back toward the University. I started to show away from my work. I didn’t meet Joel Chandler Harris or the editor of the Constitution.

“Two things later intruded upon my work and ultimately disrupted it: first, it was impossible to be a calm, cool, and impartial scientist while Negroes were being lynched, murdered, and starved; and second, there was no such apparent demand for scientific work of the kind I was doing.”

If WEB Du Bois were alive, he would probably be in Chicago immediately on the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. Some of essentially the most good reporters, sharpest thinkers, and eloquent writers in America have gathered in the neighborhood on the very hotel from which I write these words. During my time here, I even have not met a single NABJ member who disagreed with the choice to ask Donald Trump.

Sure, there have been just a few who argued that NABJ must have treated Donald Trump as if he were every other presidential candidate. They mistakenly believed that Wednesday’s fiasco might have been avoided with more aggressive questioning, more experienced journalists or a male reporter on stage. Others said NABJ needed a live fact-checker on stage with Trump. Or perhaps it was the sound.

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These persons are flawed.

The only difference between every other Trump interview and the dumpster fire that erupted on the NABJ convention is that black people organized it. Trump did what he at all times does. He attacked women. He spread racism. He lied. He spread chaos and division. We already know that black lives don’t matter to him. Everyone knows he doesn’t care in regards to the truth. Or the law. Or us. He’s a one-man lynch mob. A lover of lies. But greater than anything… Donald Trump is normal.

The most typical grievance from black journalists is how the white media hides behind a false construct of objectivity when covering Trump. Media outlets just like the New York Times usually are not objective; they are only white. All of their reporting normalizes his behavior. When they cover his criminal cases, they don’t cover him as a criminal. They are speculated to be truthful, but they routinely share his words without realizing that they arrive from the mouth of an incorrigible liar. They haven’t any problem calling people names. terrorists, robbers AND cheaters. But they clearly need more evidence before they will call Trump a racist. Yet, selecting to normalize Trump in the identical way NABJ has shown its knuckles.

They could have just said no.

Even if the NABJ invites every presidential candidate to its convention, you don’t need to be the neatest person on the planet to know you can’t treat Donald Trump like several other president. Treating a liar like a liar and a racist like a racist is a no brainer. No editor at a good outlet would ever use an authorized liar as a source. Even if their backs were against the wall, they might fact-check the lies. Most reputable outlets actually wouldn’t ask a racist for an exclusive interview (well, the New York Times would, but… you already know how do they do it.)

The NABJ decision ultimately negated the rationale for NABJ to exist. It ignored black voices and reinforced racism. It treated the arbitrary unwritten rules of white journalism as in the event that they were something black journalists should strive to follow. It was rude to black women. It helped spread racism, disinformation, and hate. It treated the nice and cozy glow of the white gaze as if it were the middle of the universe. It shifted the burden of white supremacy onto the shoulders of black journalists.

Black people usually are not magical.

I even have not seen anyone writing with a wand that would erase all barriers of equality during my time here. Even essentially the most magical of blacks cannot persuade Trump’s Mountain Dew-drinking army that their orange crush shouldn’t be a bigoted, aspiring authoritarian. There is nothing these excellent black journalists (and Harris Faulkner) could expose that the world has not already seen. Why should the mostly anti-MAGA black convention attendees need to walk within the feces that anti-black MAGAmuffins have spewed? Saying “no” can also be an option.

We can’t abracadabra force white America to care about black people, democracy, or justice when white people truly imagine that the systems and culture they’ve built are completely normal. How much work do we’ve to do before we realize that there is no such thing as a amount of logic or reason that may cure white people of the virus they willingly spread. Nor is it our duty to try. Even if I could…

I refuse.