Editor’s note: This editorial was written during the SoCal Journalism Association of Community Colleges conference at California State University, Fullerton. The editorial won first place in the on-the-spot opinion writing competition. The above cartoon, by Gerardo Delgadillo, won an honorable mention as well.
Diversity in the workplace is important, but talent should not be sacrificed in the process.
Susan Jacobs, medical editor, and Karen Robes, community news reporter, both with the Orange County Register, spoke to students attending the Southern California Regional Conference of the Journalism Association of Community Colleges Oct. 20 on the campus of California State University, Fullerton.
The message: Diversity in the newsroom is important to establishing a dynamic role in the community.
But shouldn’t that diversity come from competition for excellence? Just because you have fewer Hispanics in the newsroom, by percentage, than is compared to the coverage area doesn’t mean you have to go out and seek Hispanics so you can be in tune with your readers.
Diversity in a newsroom is important, no one is denying that. But simply put, when a newspaper is faced with hiring a white male with 14 years experience and a Hispanic male with only one year of experience, that newspaper should hire the person with more experience.
What if the Caucasian male spoke Spanish and the Hispanic man did not? What if the Hispanic man was fired from the last paper for sexual harassment? What if an Asian woman applied who spoke Spanish and had more experience than both men?
You need someone who will know how to make deadline, write enterprise pieces and reach out to the community — through language or just simply being out among a community — no matter what color his or her skin color may be.
I’m not racist. I’m not a misogynist. I’m not intolerant. I just feel that for this country to get over the race issue, it needs to become a non-issue.
Heritage is something of importance in the United States. This nation is a country of immigrants. Yet isn’t it more important to call yourself American than it is to call yourself by your ethnic make-up?
Everyone needs to get beyond the skin color and look at the person for his or her intelligence, frailties, emotions, depth.
Newsrooms should set the standard by hiring people on the perfection of their copy, not a racial quota.
So should newsrooms sacrifice quality and experience for the sake of getting an African-, Hispanic- and Asian-American on the paper?
When asked, both journalists became defensive.
“I want to be very clear,” Jacobs said. “I don’t want anyone to think that there’s the assumption that this person over here who is not of color and this person over here of color, that the person of color should be overlooked. I think there was something in your question that was gave me a touch of that.”
The point trying to be made is that no one should be judged on the color of his or her skin. That credo is universal.
But people – of color – are judging on skin color. Aren’t they in a way racist or are they just ethnocentric?
You add fuel to the fire when they say that you want equality, yet you make the point to divide people by race. Then you’re just as bad.
Jacobs said, “It’s very easy to stand outside the building with picket signs but you’ve got to get inside the building and in the room of the decision makers to actually make a difference.”
She’s right, but the point is useless unless you get off the sympathy trip and show people that you are a person of talent – not color.
Simply put, the sooner we as a society stop trying to segregate each other by race, religion or anything else and begin to recognize people as just people, then and only then can we be ethnically diverse.