By Angelo Boccato
Donald Trump has made his intention of waging war against DEI loud and clear in his second Administration.
In January, during the first week of his new Administration, Trump issued several executive orders specifically aimed at terminating diversity, equity and inclusion offices, programmes and positions in the federal government. They also directed federal agencies to contractually obligate contractors and grantees to “not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws and issued guidance that may seek to limit what state and local agencies and institutions of higher education can do to promote and ensure equal access to education.
In the White House ‘Presidential Actions’ page promoting such orders, President Trump enunciates “The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military”. This further indicates a vision of contempt for the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion policies at a federal level, and in general.
Given Trump’s well-known hostility towards media and diversity, what does this imply for Black journalists and Black media in the US?
The challenges for Black journalists in the US current political climate
“I think that Black journalists in the mainstream media are working in a really complicated space, because there are few resources and now there is an intentionality to reduce the resources related to doing their jobs and being better and reporting on things that include their identity and this is really unfortunate,” Danielle K. Brown, Professor of Journalism at Michigan State University tells MDI.
Professor Brown says news reporting that was dedicated to specific communities is vanishing, with reporters covering those stories most likely sharing the same identity. “So Black journalists are reporting on Black communities with fewer resources.”
“This is directly related to the hostile environment that our politics has created and the reduction and sort of criminalisation of DEI that is happening because they say that it is a sort of discrimination. I think that actually, as unfortunate and terrible as all that is, it’s an opportunity for Black media to do what it has always done: report for their communities.”
She added: “It’s an opportunity for people who believe and need that reporting to invest in that kind of media making, an opportunity for renewed importance, without the need to compete with some of these mainstream media, more prominent columns, as now you stand alone again.
“It’s also a challenge that Black journalists in the mainstream face, but for Black media it becomes increasingly important that they exist and they drive in a space where they won’t back off their commitment to inclusion of their communities.”
These challenges are also backed by numbers. According to a Pew Research Centre study from 2022, African American journalists amount for 6 per cent of the total number of people working in the industry.
At the same time, about a quarter of African Americans, 24 per cent, according to the same research, seek their news from Black news outlets extremely or fairly often, while 40 per cent of them do so sometimes.
African American media are various and widespread, from TV networks BET and TV One, and print publications like Chicago Defender and Los Angeles Sentinel to digital media like The Root and Blavity.
Historian Dr. Ibrahim X Kendi and journalist Bina Venkataraman brought back The Emancipator, a media whose namesake was established in 1820 as an abolitionist newspaper, while its heir is an antiracist digital magazine.
When it comes to a specific event or catalyst for bringing racial injustice, and specifically police violence against African Americans, to the mainstream, it is difficult to think of a stronger one than George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
However, the shift brought by the murder has not been a permanent one.
George Floyd’s murder, then and now, and Black narratives
The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, reignited on a massive scale the fire of the Black Lives Matter movement across the US.
As legendary basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote in the Los Angeles Times at that time “racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air.”
This point is echoed in Professor Brown’s take on this front. “When it comes to police violence and situations like the murder of George Floyd, the coverage in Minneapolis changed ephemerally, it changed for a little bit and we saw some important narrative shifts that prioritised the experience of that community and the experience of being Black in Minneapolis. That was a good shift, but it did not happen everywhere around the world and permanently.
“It’s a little unfortunate that we have not had as much attention to police violence since George Floyd. His murder was a catalyst for people to talk about police violence and there were so many other cases that happened after that and did not get as much attention, as these were not shown right, front and centre as he was.”
Professor Brown said although some journalists made an effort with their narratives to better represent their communities, as a whole, journalism’s ability to “permanently change narratives and the way in which they are constructed is very limited and we won’t see a ton of pattern shifts in terms of what the coverage looks like going forward without some kind of revolution”.
The murder of George Floyd received international media coverage, and broader reflection on racism in societies. The reporting of the Black Lives Matter protests went beyond expressing solidarity with African Americans, also highlighting the level of injustice and institutional racism rooted in history in Europe, breaking a consolidated narrative that tends to see racism as an exclusive and deeply rooted US issue (therefore conveniently removing the colonial sins of the past and institutional racism of today from the European countries’ conscience and perspective).
At the same time, Black narratives should not be limited to a specific topic or only attached to violence, as these are more akin to stereotypical narratives on Black people than original ones, a concept effectively captured in the movie American Fiction by Cord Jefferson with Jeffrey Wright, based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure.
In the movie, Wright plays university professor and writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a well-read Black author of intellectual and researched books who, due to frustration for family and personal reasons, ends up writing a novel presented as a memoir of a Black gangster and filled with stereotypes and tropes about African Americans, that turns out to be a bestseller, particularly among White middle class readers.
“One of the beautiful things about being Black is that we do not hide it. When we’re included in the media, our Blackness shows up and it is there. The possibility for building narratives about Blackness globally always comes down to how many opportunities we’re given to be in the spotlight, how many times we’re allowed to have our voices heard.
“I think that now, more than ever, it is really important for people not only to be cautious and careful on what they say as we see the rolling back of our speech, especially here in the States, but when we have opportunities to speak it is really important that we do. I think a lot gets lost when we cave to fear, when we are silent because we are scared and the one thing that we can do to make sure that our narratives, stories and experiences stay in the public life is to tell those narratives, stories and experiences,” said Professor Brown.
“I also think that more and more people are turning to social media to do this and that is one way of doing this, but still, having people willing to tell these stories to other people and engaging with media is super important so that our stories remain on the front page every once in a while” she concludes.
In the mainstream media, when non-white stories generally tend to be limited to events that cannot be ignored due to their depth and significance and then the interest evaporates, it becomes crucial to figure out how to construct, establish and reinforce Black narratives in the media. This has become especially pressing in the current political climate and with the Trump Administration’s crackdown on DEI.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Media Diversity Institute. Any question or comment should be addressed to [email protected] of the Media Diversity Institute (MDI).
