Finding ‘sadness’ on tour of U.S.
Hearst Connecticut Media livestreaming ‘To Be an American’ for readers
From his couch in rural Kansas, a burly white man who is “between manufacturing jobs” glances up at the camera and looks away. When people put the outof-work label on you, he says, “it’s hard to imagine how your life could be. It kills the dream.”
Moments later, a member of the Potawatomi Nation speaks proudly of the Indigenous rituals and traditions woven into his identity. His wife offers this amendment about life on the reservation: “As a woman, I’m not equal,” she says. “As a white woman, I’d have it easier.”
That juxtaposition is one of various compelling stories journalist Jessica Gomez discovered as she interviewed everyday Americans on a recent drive on Interstate 70 from Denver to St. Louis. And it’s just one portion of a prismatic new “Matter of Fact Listening Tour” program titled “To Be an American: Identity, Race and Justice.”
“A lot of people out there feel disenfranchised,” Gomez says. “I found more sadness than anger about it. One thing everyone said was we do too much talking and don’t do enough listening.”
The all-digital 90-minute show, which premieres at 7 p.m. Thursday on matteroffact.tv, is a production of Hearst Television, a division of the corporation that owns Hearst Connecticut Media Group. Hosted by Soledad O’Brien, the production ranges widely to address its multifaceted topic. Participants include academics, “Judas and the Black Messiah” director Shaka King, “1619 Project” creator Nikole HannahJones, writer and activist Ilyasah Shabazz, comic Gina Brillon, and immigration rights activist and author Jose Antonio Vargas.
Hearst Connecticut Media Group newspapers are among the Hearst Newspapers websites which will be streaming Thursday’s show live at 7 p.m.
The perspectives range from personal to scholarly, historical to performancebased. Author Edgar Villanueva (“Decolonizing Wealth”) reflects on his “multiple identities” as a Native American from the South who is routinely mistaken for Puerto Rican and is “constantly explaining who I am. I call it Indian 101.” Columbia University sociology Professor Bruce Western dissects the disproportionately high incarceration rate of Black Americans.
The program replicates the format and forthrightness of the initial “Listening Tour” devoted to “The Hard Truth About Bias: Images and Reality,” which premiered in October and explored, among other things, the charged question of whether Black people can be racist in a whitedominated society. (That earlier show is available to stream on matteroffact.tv, and there are plans for two more shows to air later this year.)
O’Brien sees the new “American Identity” program as “both more amorphous than the one we did on bias and more challenging.” The idea that “some people are considered American and some are not carries the big question of who really counts in society,” she adds.
A first-generation daughter of a Black Cuban mother and white Australian father, O’Brien believes her mixed-race status makes her “both an insider and an outsider.”
“That has value for me as a reporter,” she says, “but it can be a struggle as a person.”
In recent phone interviews with Hearst, the show’s participants reflected on the ideas and issues an interrogation of identity, race and justice raises:
Ilyasah Shabazz: The author, activist and daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz sees “a moment of regenerative growth and possibility” even in the face of “tragedy, pandemic, the failure of our government and bigotry.”
Pointing to the pervasive Black Lives Matter protests at a time when “each of us was confronted with the pandemic and questioning our own mortality,” she says, “I believe that a new identity is being born. Now is the time to commit to institution building and spirit-driven activism.”
Jose Antonio Vargas: “What does citizenship mean?” asks the Berkeley author and immigrant rights activist, who is an undocumented Filipino immigrant. “I think it means what we owe each other, what kind of neighbors we are and that yours is not the only voice in the room.”
Referencing the Black Lives Matter protests and violence against Asian Americans, he says that “being a citizen or having papers does not guarantee protection or even equality. Laws don’t mean anything if we don’t have a culture that respects people.”
Annette Gordon-Reed: The Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author has studied race dating back to Revolutionary and Colonial America. “Most African Americans have ancestors who have been here since at least the mid-1700s,” she says, adding that that’s much longer than many who seek to undermine their identity.
“There’s this suspicion that Blacks are not American even though we’ve been here forever and uphold the values of the Declaration of Independence.”
History, she says — pointing to the Obama birther conspiracy theories — is not something locked in the past. “We’ve been fighting this issue from the very beginning.”
Steven Winn is The San Francisco Chronicle’s former arts and culture critic. “Matter of Fact With Soledad O’Brien” Listening Tour presents “To Be an American: Identity, Race and Justice”: News talk show. Preshow begins at 6:30 p.m., with the segment beginning at 7 p.m. Thursday on matteroffact.tv. Also available via YouTube and Facebook Live.