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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot landed in a whirlwind of controversy last month when she said she would only allow journalists of color to interview her for stories about her first two years in office.
Fox News provocateur Tucker Carlson called Lightfoot a racist and a monster when he learned of the mayor’s position. A conservative outlet, the Daily Caller, is suing the mayor, claiming that his First Amendment rights have been violated.
If I’ve learned anything in the past 33 years as a journalist, it’s that sources will talk to whoever they want.
Is the policy of mayors: discriminatory? Certainly. Fanatic? Perhaps. Racist? Nope.
Why is it not racist? After all, it is a term that is often used to describe his actions.
Well, racism is discrimination on steroids, fueled by privileges accorded to those of the culturally dominant race. In the United States, it is a bias with a pickaxe. It’s a prejudice with the weight of 400 years of slavery, the Jim Crow laws and the history behind it.
This is a distinction that has at times been difficult to discern for whites, myself included.
This latest argument with the mayor reminded me of a man named Ennis Williams, a high school deputy principal I knew when I was a young education reporter in Galveston, Texas.
Mr. Williams was a wonderful source for a freshman reporter. I regularly visited him for advice as I tried to cover a community marked by years of racial hatred.
We were less than 20 years away from schools, libraries and other segregated institutions in this small town. Of course, when you’re 22 or 23, you think 20 is almost an eternity.
My generation of journalists was the first in the newspaper not to go to separate schools. None of us remembered the once ubiquitous white people and the colorful signs that marred the community.
The log track on the race was dismal. He editorially supported the Jim Crow laws during the Civil Rights Era. Until the 1970s, he would not have published the obituaries in black and white on the same page. And when I started at the newspaper in 1988, there wasn’t a single black or brown face in the entire newsroom of a majority minority community.
Older reporters would scornfully refer to the black neighborhood north of Broadway as The Jungle. The editor would determine how well the crime stories were played out depending on whether the victim was black or white.
Despite this institutional heritage, I regularly visited Mr. Williams, who was black, for advice on how to cover the whole community. He was always friendly and helpful.
And then his brilliant daughter Elicia found herself embroiled in a controversy through no fault of her own. Elicia had the highest grade point average in her class and was selected to be the first black valedictorian at Ball High School, historically white.
A school administrator, who was the boss of Ennis Williams, introduced himself and announced that he had made a mistake in posting how the grades would be weighted to determine the rank of the class. Because of this, he said that Ellicia would only be a co-bidder with a white girl.
All hell broke loose in the community. Complaints were launched across the city’s racial divide. Many black people saw this as an attempt to diminish the achievements of one of their own.
I called Mr. Williams for a comment and he didn’t want to talk to me. But the next day, a black Houston Post reporter interviewed him. A mid-level editor criticized me for not getting the interview. I was hurt like only a 23-year-old journalist with little life experience can be.
I kept thinking that the only reason Mr. Williams wouldn’t talk to me is because I’m white. It is reverse discrimination. It’s wrong.
More than three decades later, I see this situation differently.
A person can or cannot speak with whomever they want. It’s life. But more importantly, Mr Williams saw the systematic racism in the community, which included a newspaper that did not employ anyone like it.
Further, while I could sympathize with the difficulties Mr. Williams faced, I could not sympathize.
After all, I’ve never known the pain of not being able to consult a white library book like he did when growing up. No social convention expected me to walk down the gutter when I meet a woman of a different race on the sidewalk. But for Mr. Williams and millions of other African Americans, it was their life experience.
But more importantly, it wasn’t just about historical wrongs. The racial shortcomings of the newspapers were easily apparent to anyone who cared to watch.
Over the next three decades, I had time to reflect on a difficult subject: white privilege. Please note that this is a benefit that is not necessarily sought after and it does not mean that one has not had difficulties in his life. It just means that one of those struggles has not been linked to the color of their skin.
Over the years, I have seen sources who regularly share information with me and other white journalists suddenly become moms around my black colleagues. It’s not fair, but it’s still an unwanted benefit.
So when Mayor Lightfoot said she would only speak to journalists of color to encourage more diversity in the town hall press corps, my thoughts are: I don’t like it because it is unnecessarily polarizing and this restricts public access rather than expanding it.
Having said that, although I don’t like politics, I understand where it comes from.
Scott Reeder is a veteran Statehouse reporter. He works as a freelance journalist in the Springfield area. [email protected].
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