Use of the word ‘Black’ seems to spark white backlash
For some reason, there was a lot of comment this past week against a headline on the nomination of Martin Jenkins, 66, to the California Supreme Court. If confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments after a public hearing, he would be the court’s first gay member and the third Black person to serve on it. The headline was that Newsom nominated the “First openly gay person, third Black man to serve” on the Supreme Court.
The comments coming in on Facebook mirrored those of a similar headline when a “Black man” was shot and killed by West Sacramento police.
There were people offended that The Democrat felt a need to point out that Jenkins or the man in West Sacramento was Black; or that Martin is gay. This sort of information, they thought was not necessary to the story.
To a minor degree I can see that argument. Why refer to a person’s race or sexual orientation? What does it matter.
Oh, how I wish society were so advanced. Unfortunately, it’s not. Unfortunately, we’re still trying to break down barriers of race, sexual orientation and religion among many others so such information does become important.
Not that all newspapers concur to that degree. In Sacramento, for example, The Bee’s headline was “Newsom appoints Jenkins to state Supreme Court,” apparently believing that everyone would know who Jenkins
is. In Oakland, the newspapers there referred to Jenkins as an Oakland judge. And I guess that’s fine for those papers.
But in my mind, there needed to be distinguishing characteristics denoting the significance of the recommendation which centered around Jenkins being the very first gay and Black man to the court. In that overall perspective it was no different than noting, for example, that Woodland’s Alyssa Nakken was the first woman to be named as a Major League Baseball coach. In general, the most significant thing is that Alyssa is a woman.
As well, in my experience, people who usually call out the media for labeling a person in headlines or stories based on his or her race or sexual orientation are typically white and upper middle class. Whether this is an innate form of white privilege or racism I don’t know.
Some of the same arguments were made when The Democrat reported a “Black man” was shot and killed by West Sacramento police. I’m not casting judgment in that incident. To my way of thinking, West Sac PD did everything right. They even quickly released videos to demonstrate why they took the action they did.
But some readers didn’t understand why it was necessary to report the man was “Black” and noted that had the man been “white” we probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. And they would be right. But given the Black Lives Matter movement and considering farm more people of color are shot and killed by police than those who are white, I thought the distinction necessary.
Besides, if we adopt that view there would be no reason to say that George Floyd, who was murdered by a white Wisconsin police officer on May 25, was Black. Think about that.
For people who object to these thoughts or explanations, I understand. I don’t have any firm answers because our society is still so polarized.
Right now, we have a discriminatory society. For the most part, people still treat those of color differently. I wish it were not so, but it is, as hard as some of us try to treat everyone as equals or fairly.
Until that day, we’ll have to continue assigning labels in headlines or news stories.
Jim Smith is editor of The Democrat. He can be reached at news@dailydemocrat.com.