Diversity at Work

Jean Nash Johnson was a year old when the Supreme Court ruled on May 17, 1954, that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. As the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision approached, she wanted to talk to me.

A veteran feature writer at The Dallas Morning News, Jean told me she wanted to write about the decision through the lens of her own experience, growing up as an African American in Lake Charles, La.

I was reluctant. Jean already had several assignments. The turnaround time would be tight. Then there was the race issue: It's hard to write about race.

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Step Into the Minefield By Keith Woods It's happened twice now. About a year ago, I led a session on diversity with a group of 16 writers, arguing the case that journalism is at its best when it rises above the prejudices and other obstacles that conspire to keep so many people out of the daily report. To make the point, I talked about my own battle to overcome an old bias against gay men. When the journalists evaluated the session, someone declared me a homophobe. Read more >> Interested in diversity? Check out our diversity seminars. Sign up to receive Journalism with a Difference by e-mail: * Click here (sent Tuesdays)

But Jean persisted. She told me her story. As a child, she attended the parochial school in her neighborhood. The only non-blacks that she met were the nuns and priests at her school.

Then, a life-altering event: When she was 13, her parents sent her to a white high school. It was part of a state program called "Freedom of Choice," in which black students could choose to attend white schools, and white students could choose to attend black schools.

In practice, few volunteered.

Jean was one of only a handful of blacks at the high school. It was 1966, and she didn't face any angry crowds. But she experienced something that, at least to her, was worse: isolation. Her 9th grade teachers ignored her. Her classmates did not talk to her, and she ate lunch by herself in the cafeteria. She was afraid to reach out to them. She did not even know how.

And so, after a year of feeling invisible, Jean persuaded her parents to move her back to the black high school that was two blocks from their home. She joined the drill team, became president of the National Honor Society, and met her first journalism mentor. She felt nurtured and challenged.

Her experience in the black school was so positive, and her time at the white school had been so negative. That dichotomy shaped a young woman's outlook on life.

Graduating second in her class, she decided to attend a historically black college, even though several predominantly white universities wanted her. It wasn't until 1973, during a newspaper internship in Iowa, that Jean befriended a white person for the first time in her life.

* * *

I reflected on Jean's story. Questions swirled in my mind.

I wanted to know why she hadn't stuck it out. Why hadn't she stayed in the white high school in order to force integration? Did she have any regrets about it?

Jean admitted that sometimes she wishes she had been braver. But then I realized that she had been brave, that she had in fact stuck it out. A year of isolation and neglect is a lot to ask of a child -- perhaps too much. Change comes in fits and starts. Jean's year in that white high school probably began to change some teachers' and students' attitudes.

I wanted to know whether Jean was extolling the virtues of an all-black environment. Couldn't some readers twist that and criticize it as an argument for self-segregation?

Jean explained that she values diversity. That came as no surprise. She writes a lot about young people, how they bridge cultural gaps and how sometimes they can't because of continuing societal pressures.

She is happy that her teenage daughter attends a diverse school and has a multiracial circle of friends. She was simply trying to reveal how she had felt back then, during the tumult of the '60s and early '70s.

"I was a product of the times," she said.

* * *

I encouraged Jean to write her story. I decided to run it in the newspaper.

I almost didn't. I was stuck in the bureaucracy that sometimes calcifies an editor's mind. But then I broke out of that and I knew: Jean's perspective needed to be in the paper. Listening to Jean tell her story, I had a couple of insights.

• As journalists, we need to do more first-person writing on race. That's not to say we shouldn't interview other people about their experiences. But race is such a complex subject. Each person's experience with race relations is a highly personal one. Through expert, honest writing, we can explore our own subtle and sometimes conflicted feelings about race.
• As editors, we need to be aware of our own blinders and filters. When Jean talked about being the only black student in her class in 1966, I could imagine what that might be like, but I couldn't know it. So it was not for me to judge whether she, at 13, should have raised the civil rights banner and stayed in the white high school for four years, or taken comfort in returning to the black high school. It was simply up to me to listen, try to understand, and encourage more storytelling.
• As newsroom colleagues, we need to be brave in talking to one another about race, no matter how uncomfortable that might be. If we can do that, the next time there's racial tension in the newsroom, we'll have some sense of where each person is coming from. In listening to Jean, I could sense several feelings all at once: the pain and fear she must have felt as a 9th-grader, the love she has for the African American culture, the confidence she has that she took the right path.

This helped me see why Jean is so passionate about understanding young people and race. And it reminded me why I'm so passionate about getting voices like Jean's into the newspaper.