I missed this column by Howard Kurtz the other day in the Washington Post: “Little Diversity at White House.”
The first part of the column is about the lack of journalists of color in the White House Press Corps, and focuses on TV and newspaper reporters assigned to cover the presidential beat. It’s an important topic, but it saddens me that as usual, the dialogue about race in America is all about black and white. No Hispanics, no Asians, no Native Americans — the spectrum that’s included in the mission of Unity, the uber-organization of Journalists of Color, which just last summer was graced at its convention by a visit by then-candidate Barack Obama.
I understand the point is that we now have a black president and there could be more black reporters covering the White House.
That’s fine for the members of the National Association of Black Journalists, who are probably happy to have gotten their perspective in with Kurtz. But Kurtz dances around the topic of other minorities, hinting at a broader color spectrum but never taking the time to call and quote someone from the Asian American Journalists Association or National Association of Hispanic Journalists or the Native American Journalists Association.
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