Editorials

Students, N.Y. Times editors discuss race relations issue

By Robin Shulman Special to the Daily Planet
Wednesday November 01, 2000

An audience of mostly college students challenged New York Times editors and writers Monday about what news is fit to print when it comes to race in America. 

“We believe in this project with all our hearts,” said Gerald M. Boyd, deputy managing editor who conceived the Times’ year-long investigative series “How Race is Lived in America,” a 15-part series dealing with race through the lens of relationships. 

But audience members said the series reduced race relations to an “emotional statement” and that the Times often fails to fairly cover other racially charged issues, most recently the case of a Chinese American scientist charged with espionage. 

About 25 reporters and photographers fanned throughout the country over a year to produce the series, which included articles about the frustration of low-wage workers in a North Carolina pork-packing plant, the struggle of middle-school New Jersey girls of different races to maintain their friendship, and the decision of an Atlanta-area church to include a mixed-race Jesus in the Christmas pageant. Decades ago, the story would have been about blacks denied equal rights, said Boyd, who is African American. But that has changed, he said. “There's been some progress. Even so, whites and people of color remain divided.” 

About 700 people packed Wheeler Auditorium for the symposium. In cities like Berkeley, people often think “we are beyond even talking about race, that’s only for those hicks in the South,” said Timothy P. Egan, a national reporter who wrote one of the articles. Egan is Caucasian. But students lined up to comment on and question the Times coverage. 

Boyd said the genesis of the series was the office mood after the OJ Simpson verdict was announced. “Every place you looked in the New York Times when the verdict was announced, you could hear a pin drop,” he said. At the Times, as elsewhere in the United States, reactions to the verdict came down on racial lines, Boyd said. 

But soon the conversations stopped and everyone went back to their work. “Why was there this difference and why weren't people talking about it?” said Boyd. “We set out journalistically to go into this silence. The silence taking place in the newsroom, and the silence across the country,” Boyd said. 

Times writer Dana Canedy, who is African American, said, “There's a silence and fear of saying the wrong thing. Am I going to lose my job, just blow that promotion, are people going to ask me to lunch?” 

“I don't know what it is about race that makes it so powerful,” said Boyd, who said he had sleepless nights while the series was being produced. 

Timothy P. Egan, a Seattle-based correspondent, said while writing for the series he was looking for “one moment of revelation and a bit of light coming through.” 

Race often boils down to class, said UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism alumnus Charlie LeDuff, who is mixed Native American and Caucasian. “Who gets what?” he asked. 

One audience member criticized the series for being “tokenist” and superficial. Another asked about the decision to focus on black and white, as the series included only one article on Asian Americans. 

Ariel Luckey, a UC Berkeley senior in Environmental Studies, criticized the Times coverage of Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese American scientist accused of espionage. The Times, which identified the Los Alamos scientist by race, later printed an explanation for the coverage that came close to an apology. 

“We take this as seriously as anything I've ever encountered in my career as a journalist,” said Boyd. “This year will be remembered for two things,” he said. Boyd said in future the Times will recall its 15-part, 100,000-word series on race in America, and its 1,600-word statement on Wen Ho Lee.