"The truth . . . is that if government had left the negro alone, had failed to intervene to protect African Americans with troops and court decisions, Thomas wouldn't be sitting on the Supreme Court, wouldn't be in any position to wrench Douglass' writings out of context and, most certainly, wouldn't be legally married to and living openly with a white woman in Virginia.

"No matter how delusional the myth-makers are, civil and human rights for African Americans didn't simply evolve: They're the fruit of protest, of nonviolent, and sometimes violent, resistance. Those cherished rights, and the economic progress they've fostered, are also the fruit of decent people having had their eyes opened as a result of being put in situations where they must interact affirmatively across racial lines."

"The idea of color-blind systems, promoted by affirmative action opponents and, for that matter, the dream of color-blind people, is an American invention—and when it comes to race, an oxymoron. It is ironic that those of us most afflicted by the American obsession with skin color seldom call for ‘color-blind’ anything, or even use the term.

"It reminds me of the practice of ‘blind’ auditions (invented, some say, to counter charges of racism in classical music), in which a musician tries out for an orchestra by playing behind a screen—so that the administrators cannot see who is playing. Putting up the screen is an admission that people feel incapable of overcoming racist judgments. It does not prevent discrimination and is a poor excuse to others who point to the hiring of, say, a ‘first’ African American violinist as preferential treatment. We prefer to work for the end of racism, a state in which you can see me and still hear that I can play.”

"This sudden abhorrence for quotas rings false.

"Where was the great white uproar when the racial privilege enshrined in our laws and our customs gave the overwhelming advantage to people of European descent?"

"It is fair to ask, as Justice Clarence Thomas did: Does affirmative action promote the notion of racial inferiority? Or does the acceptance of a young black or Hispanic man to college help bring us closer to an equitable society? As a beneficiary of affirmative action, I would say the answer is yes and yes. Such is my love-hate relationship with affirmative action.

"Until we fix what's happening ‘down here,’ we will need affirmative action to continue to help us get ‘up there.’ And we need to remember why it was necessary in the first place."

"With a two-faced grin on affirmative action, President Bush turned the White House into the Apollo. He put black folks on the turntable and spun them into soulful senselessness.

"Bush was as shameless as a disc jockey taking payola to play only certain records. He is becoming a broken record. . . . Bush has yet to provide a vision as to how diversity can be achieved in a country where racism remains a significant impediment to education and employment. That is not news. His dad did the same thing."

"There is no doubt that Maynard [Jackson], upon learning of the decision in heaven, flashed that big, gregarious smile of his, agreeing with the five justices that there is a compelling interest for America to embrace, support and encourage diversity in our schools, businesses and communities."

"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is under fire from liberals who quibble with his take on affirmative action.

"Here's the interesting part: It's not just that Thomas disputes the benefit of race-conscious admissions at the University of Michigan. It is that he reached this conclusion by drawing on the benefit of his own life experience with racism and discrimination.

"What nerve. Imagine someone having the audacity to view an issue through his own lens. Why, you'd never catch liberals advocating such a thing. The next thing you know, feminists will be saying that women bring extra sensitivity to an issue like abortion."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's conclusion, "embraced by a court majority, is what mattered most: that race is not yet the vanished problem that affirmative action opponents pretend it is.

" . . . But don't think for a second that foes of progress have been vanquished. They and their predecessors in American history have a long record of devising new tactics and legal arguments designed to cut the legs out from under those seeking inclusion and equality.

"A case in point is the fight against affirmative action. It didn't start as a reaction to government programs of the '70s and '80s. The effort to address discrimination, past and present, with a results-oriented program started more than 130 years ago. So did the opposition."

"In fact, Thomas deleted those parts of the Douglass speech that provide historical context for understanding just how entrenched white racism is and why affirmative action is necessary to combat it.”

George Will's "distaste for the Supreme Court ruling, along with more hyperventilated protest by other white writers, brought to mind what Martin Luther King Jr. had said about times like these.

"'Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood, fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook,' King said in 1967. 'He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.'"

"While Thomas is obsessed with avoiding the 'stigma' of inferiority, Douglass sees this as 'an old dodge' that the oppressor uses against his targets. He reminded the Boston abolitionists that 'blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo-Saxons' had six centuries earlier been considered 'inferior' by the haughty Normans. To the descendants of the victims of Norman conquests, Douglass declared, 'You were down then! You are up now! I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also.'

"This is Douglass' direct message to the Clarence Thomases and Colin Powells of today. It's not surprising that Thomas skipped blithely over it. What a fool."

"Bush's father made one of the most blatant 'quota' decisions in history when he nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court to replace the great Thurgood Marshall.

"Thomas, certainly not the most qualified candidate of any persuasion at the time of his nomination, remains a most pitiful figure in the giant shadow of Marshall's stature."

"The misappropriation of the words of certain heroic icons, like Frederick Douglass, ought itself to be unconstitutional. Thomas goes on to compound the crime, saying: 'Like Douglass, I believe blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators.'

"Of course, Douglass never voiced any such belief. This 19th-century human rights champion doubtless would have welcomed any efforts to open the doors of academia to African-Americans (a judgment I make as an avid reader of writings by and about Douglass).

" . . . In fact, a postwar theme of Douglass was that the federal government had shirked its duty to further support the Negro after freeing him."

"Perhaps Thomas knows that many people perceive his success as the result of preferential treatment -- (With scant judicial experience, would he have been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court if he were white?) -- and he struggles with that burden.

"I don't.

". . . Are there those who think I'm in my job only because I'm black? Are there critics who suspect I'm just filling the newspaper's political correctness quota? Of course there are. I hear from them frequently.

"Successful blacks . . . have been subject to the slander of inferiority for the last 400 years -- well before the term 'affirmative action' became part of the political lexicon."

"Douglass gave some good advice. But what Thomas seems to forget is this: It was ignored.

"White racists did not do nothing with us. They did something to us. More often than not, they did it with the complicity of all levels of government. And what they did, in essence, amounted to them sabotaging our apples with worms, and cutting our legs out from under us before we got a chance to stand."

Boston Globe Loses Another Black Editor

Joe Williams, Living section editor at the Boston Globe, has been named assistant managing editor for local news at the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, the Star Tribune announces.

"He will be in charge of local and state news coverage and oversee the work of more than 80 reporters and editors in the Minneapolis and St. Paul newsrooms and the State Capitol," the paper says.

The departure of Williams, 41, continues the loss of African Americans at the New York Times-owned New England newspaper.

In addition to Greg Moore, who was Globe managing editor before taking the editor's job at the Denver Post 13 months ago, others include Ronald Hutson, a veteran staffer who was real estate editor, and Wil Haygood, longform reporter and author, who left last year for the Washington Post's Style section. Ann Scales, who is assistant to the editor overseeing recruiting and training, is filling in for an editorial writer on maternity leave. Reporter Kimberly Atkins, who had been a lawyer, is also leaving. "It's pathetic," said one staffer. "I'm glad to know somebody noticed."

Moreover, the Globe's minority development program, which provides a one-year internship for a person of color, has been in limbo for budgetary reasons since last year.

Remaining managers include national editor Kenneth Cooper, deputy director of photography Jim Wilson and suburban zones editor Paula Bouknight.

Lester Holt Gets "Weekend Today" Slot

Lester Holt has landed a weekend home on the "Today" show, the New York Daily News reports.

"Holt, who has filled in on the Saturday and Sunday editions of the NBC morning program since the death of David Bloom in April, will get the job permanently, NBC sources said."

"Lester has been great sitting in for Matt [Lauer] on Today," an NBC source told TV Guide.

Activists Decry "Indecent" Spanish Shock-Jocks

Latino media activists charged that Spanish-language radio jocks are getting away with graphic, indecent programming because a double standard exists in enforcing Federal Communications Commission indecency policies.

The activists, from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, held a news conference at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in New York, at which Marta Garcia, co-chair of the coalition's New York chapter, played a tape of a morning show in which an on-air personality posed as "Officer Luna from Newark, N.J.," called an unsuspecting mother and told her that her son was hit by a truck on the New Jersey Turnpike. "The victim cannot possibly be alive," the radio personality said. The audience was apparently supposed to laugh as the woman became increasingly distraught.

"If this would have happened on an English-language station, there would have been headlines," a psychiatrist sharing the stage with the activists told the reporters. "We challenge Latino journalists to investigate these and other widespread programming and negligent practices of Spanish language radio," the coalition said in a statement.

Coincidentally, the Senate Commerce Committee voted Thursday to toughen indecency rules, impose greater fines and change the FCC's biennial review of media ownership rules to four years, Daily Variety reported.

"I'm trying to wake up the Federal Communications Commission," remarked Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., who wants the FCC to start cracking down on indecent broadcast content, the publication said.

Hispanic journalists regroup in post-Blair era (USA Today)

Savoy Magazine Names New Executive Team

Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, former editor-in-chief of The Source magazine, has been named executive editor of Savoy magazine effective July 1, Savoy editor-in-chief Ron Stodghill announced. Hinds had most recently been chief creative officer, executive vice president and editorial director of 360hiphop.com, an Internet site created by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons that was merged in 2001 into BET.com. He then went to work on a book with musician Wynton Marsalis.

Stodghill also told the staff that Anita Diggs, formerly a senior editor at Random House book publisher, would join Savoy as features editor, and that Senior Editor Carla Williams, a Savoy veteran, would become managing editor. Roland S. Martin's contract as news editor ended in May and was not renewed.

Dawn Baskerville, the former executive editor, is now executive editor of Heart & Soul, a fitness and health magazine that, like Savoy, is owned by Vanguarde Media. Corynne Corbett remains Heart & Soul's editor-in-chief.

Savoy, an African American lifestyles publication, claims a base of 325,000 readers.

New Editorial Page Editors Show Native Roots

The difference made by the addition of Native American editorial page editors at two metro dailies was clearly demonstrated over the weekend.

On Sunday the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Mark Trahant, board chairman of the Maynard Institute, wrote his first column as editorial page editor, "Ceremony an important part of life."

At the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Art Coulson, named editorial page editor just last month, wrote a column headlined, "We American Indians are people, not mascots for sports teams."

Meanwhile, Executive Editor Carol Hunter of the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin wrote the previous Sunday about the Native American Journalists Association convention, which had just concluded in her city.

"Attending the convention was discomforting at times because criticisms hit close to home," she wrote. "Speakers decried the media's lack of in-depth knowledge about Indian issues and our tendency to report superficially, without the context of history or larger implications."

In previous years, Hunter acknowledged, "our coverage of the Oneidas or other tribes was largely by omission. Names or photos of Indians were rarely seen in our newspaper, except in crime coverage. Even today, we at times fall short of our commitment to fair, accurate coverage of tribal issues." She pledged that the paper would strive to do better.

AAJA Patron Believed "Journalists Change Lives"

The Dallas Morning News' Esther Wu remembers Dr. Suzanne Ahn, a Dallas neurologist who died at age 51 on June 22 after battling lung cancer, as a social activist who nevertheless had her foibles.

"Suzanne and I didn't always see eye to eye. But she had a charming way of persuading you to see things her way," writes Wu, who is secretary of the Asian American Journalists Association.

"I once told her that I thought being a physician was the most important profession a person could aspire to. "It must be wonderful to be able to save a life," I said.

"But Suzanne disagreed, saying journalists change lives. 'As a journalist, you have the power to right many, many wrongs,' she told me.

"I didn't know how strongly she felt about this until last year, when she endowed the Asian American Journalists Association with $ 100,000 to create an award for those whose works advance the cause of civil rights and social justice for Asian-Americans.

". . . Suzanne always got her way. Well, most of the time."

Awards Show Audience a Record for BET

Black Entertainment Television shattered the network’s record for viewership as its telecast of the BET Awards scored a 4.3 rating, which translates into 3.2 million households and 5.5 million viewers, BET announces.

"Those household and viewer tallies are the best in BET’s 23-year history and surpass the previous all-time best, a 1996 telecast of an exclusive interview with O. J. Simpson following his murder acquittal (3.1 million households; 4.2 million viewers).

“For us, this is the ultimate validation for the biggest African-American awards show on television,” said BET President and Chief Operating Officer Debra Lee. “There was so much hard work and love poured into this show by the BET staff and Cossette Productions. For our fans to respond in record numbers clearly shows that they love what we do, and underscores the fact that BET is the Number 1 destination for African Americans of all ages.”

The network plans to rerun its tribute to African Americans in music, sports and acting on Tuesday, July 8, and Thursday, July 10, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

McGowan to Write Book About N.Y. Times

"Author William McGowan -- and not disgraced ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair -- appears to be the first writer to cash on the scandal that won't die at the Paper of Wreckage," writes Keith J. Kelly in the New York Post.

"McGowan has signed a deal for 'slightly less than six figures' to write 'Gray Lady Down: Jayson Blair and How the New York Times Broke Faith With America,' said Peter Collier, publisher of San Francisco-based Encounter Books, which is publishing the title.

"McGowan said he plans to look at the past 10 years under the reign of publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. - not just the past two months.

"Collier said he expected 'Gray Lady Down' to sell 'a lot more' than the 35,000 copies McGowan's last book, 'Coloring the News,' sold for his small-press imprint. 'Gray Lady Down' is due out in the spring of 2004.

"Meanwhile, Blair has had no luck so far in finding a publisher for his tawdry tail of woe and deceit." Kelly reports.

White Males Still Direct 80% of Prime-Time Shows

For the third year in a row, the Directors Guild of America has calculated the number of minority and women directors hired by the top 40 prime-time television programs, Television Week reports.

"And for the third year in row, the study found that about 80 percent of episodes were directed by white males.

"'The report reveals that once again the producers and the networks have failed to fulfill their contractual good faith obligation to hire more women and minority directors,' said DGA President Martha Coolidge.

"The report showed that of the 860 total episodes studied in 2002-2003, Caucasian males directed 705 (82 percent); women directed 92 (11 percent); African Americans, 43 (5 percent); Latinos, 14 (2 percent); and Asian Americans directed 8 episodes (1 percent)."

National Enquirer Publisher Targeting Latinos

"The expansion into the Hispanic market will pivot on AMI's well-established distribution network for its portfolio of supermarket tabloids, including ¡Mira!, a Spanish-language celebrity gossip biweekly with a circulation of 100,000, said Dalia Sánchez, vice president and editorial director for the Latino Magazine Group."

"The first Latin celebrity project will be a magazine by Univisión television star Raúl de Molina, better known to viewers as 'El Gordo' of the talk-show host team El Gordo y La Flaca."

"The magazine will reveal celebrities' secrets that were not aired on the TV show, Sánchez said."

Sam Fulwood to Readers: I Don't Speak for All Blacks

"I have expressed strong opinions on racial issues in my columns. I will continue to do so. But I don't rush to find a racial angle in every topic I write about. And I don't feel obliged to comment about every incident that involves race," writes Sam Fulwood III, Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist, responding to readers who "dared and taunted me to condemn the May Day attack on a 13-year-old white girl by a mostly black and Hispanic mob."

He continued: "When I do speak about race, it's only my opinion. I don't -- I can't -- represent all black people.

"Since I'm being brutally honest here, let me say that it drives me batty to realize that for many white readers, I'm their only link to the many and varied opinions held by black people. . . "

"In the meantime, don't make this column your one-stop source for insight into what every African-American thinks.

"One more point. I suspect there's another reason why some people wanted me to criticize the black kids: They wanted to hear a 'spokesman' for blacks condemn other blacks.

"In effect, those readers were upset because I robbed them of the chance to wave the words of a black columnist as proof that black-on-white racism exists.

"Well, folks, it does exist, but it's not my job to point out every instance of it just to give cover to the racists among you."

Richard Prince's Book Notes-- 10 to Start Summer

Send tips and comments to Richard Prince rprince@maynardije.org.

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