Yes, I Am Timid When It Comes To Diversity

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"Get reporters and photographers -- and editors -- regularly out of the office and into minority communities for orientation and education. The fact is that most white journalists, as other white professionals, are likely to live in predominately white neighborhoods and are likely to be unfamiliar with predominately minority neighborhoods and communities or what is going on in them (Haiman 46)."

 

First of all, after reading the section on Haiman I most wanted to comment on the section about diversity. But I had to jump back to our class website to make sure other people were talking about diversity too (Thanks Josie). And it is because I am uncomfortable with the topic. I've grown up in a fairly tolerant world but I have never thought that "tolerant" is enough. One day I would like each race to view the other as nothing more than another human being with different cultural beliefs. And I would like to see an across the board understanding of everyone's cultural beliefs so that it will only be embraced, not discriminated against. BUT we aren't there yet.

 

I'm glad Haiman addresses this issue and I think it is done well. I chose the above quote because I think, in general, that news is too often blood, guts and mayhem. And if we THINK Hispanics are causing the crime rate to go up, we report on the Hispanic crimes. But if there is a special celebration of Cinco DeMayo, we don't cover it. But we do cover the St. Patrick's Day parade. Why is one holiday more "coverable" than the other? I understand that it depends if something is newsworthy or not, but do we let our prejudices CREATE something newsworthy about one cultural celebration and not the other?

 

I do think that by doing what Haiman states above will allow for a larger understanding of the many different cultures merged together in America.

1 Comments

Katie Vann said:

I was nervous to talk about diversity as well and I wish I would have read your blog before posting the little paragraph that I did because I definately played it too safe. It just seems to me that no matter how the subject is approached, someone is pointing fingers and blaming someone for something all the time when it comes to this topic. I agree completely with you, until people can finally accept each other's differences and move on, problems like these will always arise, in and out of journalism.

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