Why Is It Important to Know a Competency When You See It

Farai Chideya is the creator and host of "Our Body Politic," a weekly podcast by and for Black women and women of color

Farai Chideya is a journalist whose career has encompassed academia equally well every bit broadcast and print journalism. She has worked at news organizations including NPR, CNN, ABC News, FiveThirtyEight, and The Intercept. Chideya, who has reported from 49 states and continues to do on-the-ground reporting, has covered every presidential ballot since 1996.

She spent four years as a distinguished writer‑in‑residence at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Plant and she studied the lack of diversity in American newsrooms equally a fellow at Harvard Shorenstein Middle. Her books include "Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans" and "The Episodic Career."

Currently she is the plan officeholder for journalism at the Ford Foundation. In addition, she is the creator and host of the podcast, "Our Trunk Politic," which is by, virtually, and for Blackness women and women of color.

She spoke with Nieman Fellows in Nov. Edited excerpts:

On understanding civilization war advice

You have to understand the dynamics of culture war communication. I feel the political press and all press lost touch with the thought that you can't fact-bank check a culture state of war. That'southward but non how it works. You have to have the cultural competency to sympathise how y'all got into this culture state of war, who'due south perpetrating it, who are the so‑chosen bystanders.

The reality is no i's a bystander in a culture war. You're usually either a perpetrator, a resistance fighter, or a victim. I experience at that place is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the act of telling the truth through journalism is simply non enough without agreement why disinformation and lies work. They're very appealing, and they get viral much faster than the truth. Journalists have been slow on the uptake about that.

On mocking

One of the things we talked about a lot this election cycle is the constant mocking of working income whites by the American press. In some ways, information technology'south more acceptable now to exist mocking and scornful of working class whites than it is to be so openly [mocking] of people of color. It's completely unhelpful to mock working class white Trump voters. Information technology is helpful to go and talk to them and understand both the realities that they face and the manipulative messaging going on.

People in eastern Ohio are much more likely to think that the U.S.‑United mexican states border is a problem to America than people who live on the U.S.‑Mexico border, including other white conservatives. Why is that? You need to sympathise the culture of disinformation relies on and thrives on distance, physical or ideological.

On potentially fatal behavior

The affair is information technology'southward not disparaging of working class white Americans to bespeak out where some of them have bought into a culture war that also kills them. It'southward doing good reporting, which is very different from mocking. In Jonathan Metzl'south "Dying of Whiteness," which I highly recommend everyone read, he talks about different policies including white Americans who are poor who have been against Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Human action, gun laws that empirically allow more white people to impale and exist killed, etc. It'due south an encompass of cultural nationalism, which is also tied to white nationalism through public policy.

In that location was a white nationalist, who I DM‑ed with on Twitter for over a year. Someone was like, "Why would you lot want to talk to a white nationalist?" I said, "To understand why and so many people are attracted to an ideology that then can exist weaponized to gain political power like now."

They were like, "Well, I don't think at that place'southward that much you can learn from them," and I was like, "Au contraire. If yous sympathize why people choose white nationalism over money and health and survival, you have unlocked a whole Candy Beat bonus."

The reality is that a sense of belonging, a spiritual-cultural sense of belonging, is something that people will die for, for many unlike reasons, adept and bad. People who died during the civil rights era died to brand the earth better for people of colour and everyone.

People who are dying for whiteness also believe that they are making the earth better. You can discuss that without endorsing their point of view, but to not understand information technology is function of the reason that we are where we are, because we just pretended it wasn't happening.

At that place are a lot of people who are willing to die for a supremacist or nationalist view of whiteness. Rather than saying, "All these Trump voters are stupid considering they won't wear masks." For the ones who don't, first asking what is more important than life itself? Why are you following a political ideology that is leading y'all to die? Which is what's happening, measurably. That'due south an interesting question, and it produces interesting answers, which is a lot better than merely being snarky.

When I've interviewed white supremacists and nationalists, they talk nearly coming home to family unit when they bring together active white supremacist movements. It reminds me very much of what people take said almost joining gangs.

You could have a guy who is black or Latino who joined a gang in 50.A. They may take the aforementioned motivation for joining a gang that a white nationalist has for joining a white supremacist move. Information technology is that sense of belonging that transcends your day‑to‑day life.

It doesn't mean that having a sense of belonging is wrong. The people who have done the most good to this world have a passionate sense of belonging that drives their actions. What I'thou saying is that the sense of belonging itself is neither inherently correct nor wrong.

You tin can accept a sense of belonging to the Nazi Party. You tin can have a sense of belonging to the KKK. Y'all tin have a sense of belonging to any number of movements or affiliations that exercise harm or skilful in the world, and then to figure out why people feel that they have a sense of belonging rooted in racial resentment and terrorism is important.

On asking the right questions

When journalists embrace science, nosotros tin exist culturally competent about the reasons why people deny science. For example, one study institute that half of Black people in America don't intend to take the vaccine considering of fear of the scientific institution's racism, which is well documented.

Instead of saying, "Half of Black people are crazy and don't want to live," you could say, "Because of the long history of medical malpractice and deliberate utilize of Black people as test subjects, nosotros find at present that fifty pct of African Americans don't desire to take the vaccine. What would it take to prove to Black people that this is safe?"

One thing that was interesting is in Mississippi at first Blackness people were the most probable to dice of Covid. Now it'south white people considering Black Americans are wearing masks more than white Americans. I think Blackness Americans know that nosotros're dying disproportionately.

As well, in that question, it's not, why are white people in Mississippi so stupid? The question is "What political and cultural factors make white Americans non want to clothing masks in Mississippi?" It's most finding the right question.

A lot of times, nosotros're just not asking the right question, or nosotros're just saying, people are stupid. I call back and then much of dealing with information in a culture war era where there's racial tensions is not going for the easy mocking reply.

On election polls

I am a huge fan of combining field reporting and data from other sources. The story that I was seeing [during the 2016 ballot] about the enthusiasm for Trump, by doing field reporting, far exceeded what the polling numbers were showing. I don't feel that journalism that relies on polling solitary is going to be remotely accurate for the foreseeable hereafter.

When yous're a political operative and the question, why polling comes upwardly, it'due south like, well, I desire to know where to place my advertizement buys, I want to know who to try to attain, who'south persuadable. When you lot get to why polling for journalism, we have to enquire some serious questions like, why are we obsessed with polling?

Nosotros need to start looking at political polls that fashion in terms of news for general interest audiences. It'due south incidental to nearly people consuming news whether someone is up 3 points or down three points. If y'all were a voter who, for example, is voting to cease the Covid pandemic, increase the minimum wage, or decrease the minimum wage, or take freedom from mask mandates, the polling shouldn't affect your choices.

Nosotros every bit journalists have created a whole meta‑narrative manufacture around polling that'southward really, I think, more well-nigh enriching ourselves than it is almost enriching public knowledge.

On what white male editors ignored

When I talked about the role of racial resentment in analogousness for Trump [in 2016], I was shut down past a lot of my editors who were all white men. I have had one of my quondam editors apologize to me for basically not paying attention to what I said. The reality is that I wasn't merely proverb this; I remember there was an assumption that I was maxim this because I was Blackness. No, I'm a Blackness woman who's been a reporter for three decades, and who'southward been out in the field, and who is out in the field now.

My lived feel plus my reporting experience actually means I know things, but in newsrooms, the truth that makes the printed page, or the digital folio, or makes air, is ofttimes shaped by what editors recall is true.

If you come in with a totally true story that'southward a man bites canis familiaris story, to them, they may genuinely recall, "Oh, that's a homo bites domestic dog story, and it's but not true. It's got to accept been made up."

If yous're someone similar me who's a Black American who'south taken rental cars through 49 of the 50 U.S. states in America and talked to white nationalists, and talked to people working on labor rights, and immigration rights, and shutting downward evictions, and real manor speculators who are buying buildings, and all these unlike types of people, I oasis't seen a man bite a domestic dog, just I've seen a lot.

There is a question in newsrooms of how people who concord the superlative editorial power perceive the piece of work of the people in their ain newsrooms, permit lonely exterior of them. It's a huge trouble.

If the news media had listened to Black and other non‑white reporters more in 2016, I don't remember there would accept been this breathless clutching of pearls like, "Oh, my God. This isn't the America I know." That's because you don't leave the house.

Honestly, the reality is that people who get to decide the news too accept to make up one's mind what uncomfortable truths we tell about our nation. No group of people, Black, white, or majestic, is perfect, but there was a conscious stifling of narratives around white racial resentment out of the misguided idea that somehow that fabricated the news more off-white. Information technology does non.

What makes the news off-white is listening to people who use racial resentment equally one of the indicators for who they should vote for, and finding out why. Not to suppress that they believe that but say, "Well, what makes you call back that?" and become into the circumstances of their lives.

Even when I interview a white supremacist, I don't view them as people without merit. I don't view them as inhuman. I view them as human beings, making a set of choices almost their life, choices that I may not concord with, only that I choose to empathise rather than to suppress the knowledge of.

In many cases, media organizations basically said, "I tin't cover this, considering it'south as well hot. I can't talk about this."

On assessing the cultural competency of coverage

One of my friends is a woman named Marie Nelson who'south a senior vice president at ABC News. Role of her chore is to develop a running analysis of whether ABC'southward coverage has the cultural competency to deal with a diverse America.

Whether she succeeds or not, is just partly up to her, but the whole question of examining whether there is cultural competency across all of your coverage, to examine what stories are getting the most oxygen and what stories aren't, where resource are practical etc., is very different from saying, "Oh, we're going to hire an urban affairs reporter, and they're going to cover our ass on this race thing. Then, nobody else volition have to deal with it."

On knowing when to leave

If the place you're working has no willingness to modify, cease trying to change information technology. Become out. I am here to tell you lot that it is improve to interruption for the fences if at that place is no willingness to change than to keep beating your caput confronting a cinderblock wall. That doesn't hateful to abandon newsrooms, or to give up too easily. Information technology's to enquire yourself, is your job to effort to use a toothpick to break through a cinderblock wall, or to effigy out where the door is and get out?

It may not fifty-fifty mean getting out of a company. It may mean getting out of a department, or it may mean getting out of the mindset and maxim, "All of us are overworked. One-half of our team is parenting from domicile. When can nosotros reasonably expect to have this discussion at a fourth dimension where we can exist more focused about it?"

Further Reading

restoacurt1960.blogspot.com

Source: https://niemanreports.org/articles/cultural-competency-and-why-it-is-important-to-covering-todays-america/

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