The Gantt Report
I began my major media career in 1968 as a television writer at WSB-TV in Atlanta Georgia.
At that time, the riots, mayhem and civil disturbances of the late 1960s and early 1970s encouraged every big city newspaper, radio and television station that was accused of not having Black reporters covering events that took place in Black neighborhoods to go out and hire one or two African Americans.
We didn’t need to have media experience or communications education. The number one skill emerging Black journalists needed to have was the ability to read!
Most of your heroes like the late CBS icon Ed Bradley, Washington, D.C.s Jim Vance and many others were mere school teachers when they were hired as broadcasters.
Those of us that were first hired risked our careers and, perhaps in some instances, our lives, as we protested and spoke out for increased hiring of Blacks and other minorities.
But oh what a difference a day and some years make!
Today, many of us in Black communities don’t recognize the dark-skinned anchors and reporters with highly visible jobs in broadcast and print media. They don’t live in our communities, they don’t shop in our communities or patronize businesses in our communities and they don’t embrace our communities.
I didn’t go to the recent National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Orlando, Florida, but if it was like other NABJ conventions that I have attended before, most of the attendees will tell you they got their low-level or mid-level media jobs because they are great journalists and not because of their race and ethnicity.
Stop laughing!
Even if some writers and reporters don’t really know why they were hired, The Gantt Report says one thing is crystal clear, the white people who are hiring today’s ethnic journalists know exactly who they are hiring!
New journalists are pre-screened and screened some more. Media employers know the backgrounds, the educations, the memberships, the affiliations, the credit records, the arrest records and family data of every worker hired.
Now, that brings us to another issue of dark-skinned people attacking each other.
In the news last week, CNN news host Don Lemon made comments which sort of said that, saggy pants, use of the N-word, lack of education, and poor parenting have a lot to do with condition of the masses of African Americans.
Lemon is not the first to suggest such explanations. His view is similar to views expressed by Bill Cosby and others.
The Bible says you should love God and love your neighbors. The expressions of disdain regarding Black people does not indicate that some of these Blacks love their Black neighbors.
Instead, it appears that comments that parrot Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and other conservatives show brain damage, not wisdom.
Black people didn’t create the N-word, give prisoners jail pants that sagged because they don’t fit, or assign Black children to attend substandard schools.
And there is no worse example in world history of poor, bad and devilish parenting than the type of parents white slave masters were that disrespected, disowned, beat, killed and sold their own offspring to other slave masters that would beat the children some more!
When people like Don Lemon hate the way some Black people are, it indicates to me that they hate themselves.
Instead of criticizing African Americans in the manner that our exploiters want us to be criticized, Don Lemon and those that agree with him should ask themselves one question.
Who taught you to hate yourself?
