WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show has been celebrating its 25 year anniversary all month long. On Thursday, October 30, the 2-hour daily issues-based and community-oriented call in program hosted its final anniversary event, a live show at the Society for Ethical Culture. After quiz time with Mo Rocca and music time with Slavic Soul Party, Lehrer invited three panelists (public radio and talk show personality, Tavis Smiley, New York Times columnist, Gail Collins, and editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick) to join him in a conversation reflecting back on the past quarter century and looking ahead to the future media climate. Lehrer began by asking each guest to identify one big thing that had changed over the past twenty-five years, and one important thing that hadn’t.
Tavis Smiley, Gail Collins, and David Remnick speak with Brian Lehrer at live show celebrating 25th Anniversary of Lehrer’s eponymous WNYC radio show.
Remnick began.
Remnick: “One thing that’s changed markedly is there’s tremendous change in the way minorities are viewed in this country in general. The latest edition in a revolutionary way is gay rights. All of these things are incomplete: civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and a lot else. But the progress that’s been made in last twenty-five years cannot be denied. That is an enormous change.”
This was an interesting, fairly innocuous statement. However, when Smiley went last, he actually disagreed:
Smiley: I am still disturbed after twenty-five years that public radio does not sound like America looks. We’ve come a long way, and this is not an indictment on public radio alone, but it is the case that twenty-five years later, so many of our public institutions still do not look or sound like the most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America that we live in and we still have work to do even as we celebrate great icons in this business like Brian Lehrer. There’s still so much more diversity and inclusion that we are lacking in public radio and quite frankly on public television as well.
For those who don’t know this, when you go home tonight just google, do a little reading about what Lyndon Johnson had in mind when he brought public television and public radio to bear. It wasn’t to placate a particular and singular community… Bill Moyers speaks more eloquently about this than anybody in the country about what public TV and public radio were initially designed to do. Pardon my French, but we ain’t there yet.
When Smiley finished, Lehrer asked him if he believed Remnick was just being the “too optimistic white guy” looking at racial issue, to which Smiley replied, simply “yes.” This exchange was not confrontational, and both Remnick and Smiley agreed that that they were coming from the same place on this issue, with some slight differences. Remnick acknowledged that everything wasn’t where it should be, but wanted to recognize that there had been improvements.
Remnick: Are we anywhere near finished. No. Nothing finishes.
Smiley: But I think that what America suffers from is what I would characterize as a fairness fatigue. We suffer from a fairness fatigue. Because we can’t ever come to wrestle with the reality of not contesting the humanity of any of our fellow citizens, we can only put one particular group or persons out front at a time. So you’re absolutely right, that we’ve made great progress on the issues of gays and lesbians being treated as they should be treated, as fellow citizens. But that doesn’t mean we’ve made progress for our Hispanic brothers and sisters. It doesn’t mean we have not regressed on the progress that was made for African-Americans.
Smiley goes on to address the difference between optimism and hope.
Smiley: I’m not an optimist, but I am a prisoner of hope… I’m always hopeful about the American experience, I’m always hopeful about our future. But if you were to ask me to give you three reasons that l’m optimistic that we’re getting it right on brown people, that we’re getting it right on black people, while we’re at this moment getting it right, or more right on gays and lesbians, there’s a divide there. What I’m trying to get at is a conversation where we respect the full humanity, the full dignity, the integrity of every fellow citizen, not just one group at a time, for space of time.
Tavis Smiley speaking at the Brian Lehrer Show’s 25th Anniversary Celebration
After Lehrer calls out Collins for “waiting to be called on,” he (jokingly) asks her give the “female perspective.”
Collins: “The story of women over the last 50 years is the most amazing story… When I talk and think about what women are up to today… most of the problems… It’s not so much about sex, as it is about class. It’s poor women who are still really, really struggling. And frankly, it’s the same thing for blacks, for Hispanics. The problem for blacks and Hispanics is that there are a lot more of them on the bottom. But it’s always about class. And frankly, I think the reason we’ve made such spectacular progress on gay rights is that most of the gay and lesbian people that America is seeing coming out, are middle class. To me, the big thing out there is not any of the old battles, so much as the new one about class.”
Can’t you just hear bell hooks whispering “intersectionality” in the background? Kudos to Smiley for calling out America’s “fairness fatigue,” and to Collins for recognizing, the problems of any marginalized group do not exist in a vacuum.
As a queer woman of color, I’m often challenged by the mainstream media’s inability to acknowledge and respect the “full humanity of every” (I’ll change citizen to) person. It’s odd that I sometimes feel my desire to champion the success of one group feels as though I’m pushing another group’s priorities aside. It may even come across as an inability to choose a side. But then I remember, that I don’t have to.
It is telling to see members of the mainstream media (educated and arguably progressive members of the mainstream media) identify how problematic identity politics are without acknowledging intersectionality. That this debate is still needed in 2014, is perhaps surprising. But then again, if you need a recent example of a member of the right-stream media’s inability to recognize the very existence of the privilege created by these intersectionalities, there’s this.
You can read a recap of the event and listen to the full discussion on WNYC. Lehrer’s conversation with Collins, Remnick, and Smiley begins just before the 1 hour mark.
a nik at knight production 