Affirmative Action : A Personal Perspective
2008-03-18
By Del Walters
Question: What do Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, Tucker Carlson, Anderson Cooper, Dianne Sawyer, Meredith Vieira, Campbell Brown, Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh… etc…etc…etc...All have in common?
By now you get it. W hen it comes to race and racism in America, America’s landscape is sadly in need of balance. So when Geraldine Ferraro declared that somehow Barack Obama was about to be anointed the nation’s first affirmative action president I cringed, then doubled over in the type of pain only a thirty year wasted life on the affirmative action forefront could produce.
Affirmative action was anything but that. There is this belief in white America, and apparently in the house of Ferraro, that when blacks got jobs as a result of affirmative action, the heavens opened up, the chorus sang and all was right in the world. Let me remind the world of what the affirmative action reality actually was.
First we need some perspective. America was burning. The anger of slavery, segregation, discrimination and the death of civil rights icons like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the others divided America along lines of race. Each night on the evening news, my family and millions of other African American families (we were negroes then) around the nation were forced to watch as white reporters and anchors described our anger. Undoubtedly they would find the one African American who said little of how we really felt, but got on TV because he or she said it louder. I never will forget the expression on my grandmother’s face as the local news anchor interviewed the local wino who faced the camera and declared my hometown would be the next to burn. The truth was he didn’t even know how to light the match.
Affirmative action wasn’t a gift it was the glue that was needed to bring a badly damaged America together. It wasn’t well thought out or for that matter executed. White men who believed they were the best at what they did suddenly found themselves thrust into the unemployment line and told at the end of their careers to go back to school and retrain. Others suddenly found themselves trust into the front lines of what the world came to know as integration. I was one of the latter. I was eighteen. That’s the way it unfolded in small town America. My grandmother got her wish, my hometown got its first black broadcaster and I knew that if I was to succeed the black community would be watching to see who I would interview, whether it would be the winner or the wino.
In June of 1976, I became the first full time African American broadcaster in my hometown of Wheeling, West Virginia. Here’s how it really happened. I was hitchhiking in front of the local NBC Affiliate at the time, and the news director/ anchor came running out and asked me what I was doing with my life. The truth was, at the time, I wanted to be a doctor. I knew nothing about TV, journalism or Edward R. Murrow and the lofty standard of the first amendment. Black men were afraid to speak out, let alone believe there was a part of the constitution that protected our speech when we did. The offer to work in television was almost impossible to ignore. It was a full time paying job, and thus began a long and prosperous career.
I got that job because I was black and the man who hired me went to his grave denying it. I stayed in television for thirty-two years and in the end compiled one of the best journalistic records for a television reporter in Washington D.C. history. Thirty-two years later managers were still bringing in black anchors to replace me to make sure they maintained the delicate balance of racial equality. It had nothing to do with my abilities, they were looking for someone who could do my job cheaper.
When I entered television it was home to some of the greatest African American journalists the world had ever seen. Ed Bradley had a combination of guts and compassion and class. Bryant Gumbel could reduce a man to stupidity in a single question, and then walk the man to the lobby and slowly remove the dagger he had just planted firmly in his back. Can anyone forget Bernie Shaw under the desk as the bombs rained down in the first Gulf War? Carole Simpson, (what poise) Max Robinson (what tubes), George Strait (what brains) on the medical front and the list goes on and one. To a person their presence on the airwaves made American a better place as we began to recognize that diversity went far beyond the color of a person’s skin.
But where the Ferraros of the world get it wrong is that most of us who walked the integration gauntlet never heard the chorus. Instead we heard the word ‘nigger’ over and over again. Sometimes it was uttered behind our backs, often in front of our faces. Retaliation meant the door would be closed forever for those who chose to follow in our footsteps, ignoring it ate away at the very essence of our souls. At one point, in Washington, D.C. of all places, the news director closed the door looked me in the eye and declared he didn’t think I was black. He was white. I never will forget the anger that swelled up inside me. I wanted to hit him, to cry out in anger, but instead I said nothing. I had the next African American who would walk through those doors to protect. Looking back I wish I had decked him. He deserved it and so did I.
No, when affirmative action occurred the skies didn’t open up, and no one heard the singing. Affirmative action, long since abandoned, left scars on both side of the racial divide. White men who spent lifetimes in careers, with house notes and tuition payments to make and suddenly found themselves on the unemployment line got even when the far right declared America was racially one and affirmative action was no longer needed.
White women waited even longer to get their chance at the American dream and still lag far behind their mail counterparts. And yes, black men like me lost our jobs. We were replaced by many of the white men who now sit around the table. Those who lack the capacity and the perspective to put it all together. I feel for the white man I replaced, and the white man who had me replaced. I have now walked in both of their shoes.
That is why the wounds on both sides of the divide are so great. The anger never went away, it just switched sides for a while. That is what makes the comments of Geraldine Ferraro and Jeremiah Wrights so dangerous. They are walking into the theater of the last forty years and yelling fire, or in this case racism and the people around the table should know it. The people around the table should be warning all parties that playing with racism on either side is playing with fire.
That is why minorities must also be the moderators. Not just the guests on these shows but the hosts. We had a seat at the table in the sixties, and moved to the head of the table in the seventies. Over the last decade we have been asked to leave.
A seat simply isn’t good enough if America is to once again move forward. Anyone in television long enough to matter knows this. It is not enough to wear the microphone. We must be the ones in the board rooms and control rooms. We must be the ones on the floor directing the questions to the various panelists and demanding answers. We should know this.
The truth about affirmative action, or lack thereof sits before us each and every weekend as color television reverts back to black and white. Mostly white. So finally I once again ask the question, what do Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Keith Olberman, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, Tucker Carlson, Anderson Cooper, Dianne Sawyer, Meredith Vieira, Campbell Brown, Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh… etc…etc…etc...All have in common?
The one thing they all have in common makes it difficult to see them as any type of authority on the issues of race and racism in America. Once again they are all white. My grandmother and an entire generation who fought for change, are rolling over in their graves.
Del Walters in an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist documentary filmmaker. He is the author of the new novel The Race.
