Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

Some residents in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood have already chosen their president: Daniel Dory, a local 23-year-old who previously served as unofficial “mayor” of their street.

Danny, as everyone calls him, has trisomy 21 Down Syndrome, where each gene has an extra chromosome.  But his outgoing and independent personality, combined with a love of life and all the people in it, make him a natural friend and leader.  They also challenge commonly held public preconceptions about what someone with this most common of genetic conditions is capable of achieving in life.

Sarah Palin’s nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate promised to broaden that awareness.  As Americans met  the Alaska Governor and her family, including her newborn son Trig, who has Down Syndrome, Gov. Palin declared that if she and John McCain were elected, families of special needs children would have “a friend in the White House.”  In that large and tight-knit community whose voices often go unheeded, such promises have sparked contrasting feelings of hope and circumspection.

“As a mother, your heart goes out to her because even in this day and age, it’s hard,” said Mary Dory, Danny’s mother and a nurse for almost 30 years at Beth Israel Medical Center in Brooklyn.

In the 1980s and 90s, Ms. Dory and her husband’s efforts to find strong school services for their son were helped by doctor’s referral and the word-of-mouth among supportive parents in Brooklyn’s Catholic school network.  Last year, Danny graduated from Bishop Ford High School in Park Slope and is now at the nonprofit Guild for Exceptional Children in Bay Ridge, where he has occupational therapy and works at businesses throughout Brooklyn, earning a small stipend.

But in the public school system, it is more difficult to find similar programs. Mei Fung Zhang knows this from personal experience. She spent the last 10 years helping her brother and sister-in-law find programs in their Sheepshead Bay neighborhood to challenge and educate their now 17-year-old daughter, Lily Zhu, who also has trisomy 21 Down Syndrome.

“She started special education classes when she was two [and] she learned a lot in elementary school, especially when she had [a bilingual] paraprofessional” said Mrs. Zhang, referring to the teaching aides for children with special needs. But now Lily is enrolled in a program where students of different grade levels learn the same material together. “ She’s learning things she already knows, like third grade level math,” said her aunt.

“The summer-only training does nothing and she’s going to graduate high school soon.  We are looking for programs [that provide] job training and social benefits,” said Mrs. Zhang.

When it comes to the presidential election, Mrs. Zhang says her family has been pretty apathetic, but she wonders how the country could afford any additional services for students.

“I hope the government or the education department can do more for hoever wins the election,

“I think it’s great that [Trig Palin is] in the public eye,” said Mary Dory.  “It’s going to make people more aware, more educated and less judgmental.  I don’t really know if it’ll do anything for education programs, though.”

Others are even less optimistic. In a September column in the Phoenix New Times, editor Amy Silverman, the mother of a 5-year old girl with Down Syndrome, writes that Gov. Palin’s promises are not realistic for many reasons.

“There’s never enough funding … but worse, the whole system is so poorly managed you practically need a Ph.D. in public policy (or another parent who’s already been though this, or a lawyer, or all three) to help you get services,” Mrs. Silverman wrote.

“All you need to do is drive to the center of any large city in America and watch homeless schizophrenics push shopping carts to see the effects another social conservative — Ronald Reagan — had on another disenfranchised group, the country’s mentally ill.”

Neither presidential candidate stood out for Danny Dory although he did vote, exercising a right that the National Disability Rights Network has been actively promoting “I don’t like what I’m seeing on TV,” Danny said. “It is going to be a battle between them, but I don’t care who wins or who is president.  I just want a president.”

Here is my latest blog post.

These are a compilation of videos I came across YouTube during the election campaign. I will not use barelypolitical aka Obama Girl in this post. Enjoy!

McCain vs. Madonna: Gray Ambition

Barack Roll

McCain Green Screen – ‘Super McCain Bros’

  (more…)

New Yorkers and Americans alike came out in droves on Tuesday. Unprecedented voter turn out especially among young people and minority groups, resulted in the election of the first African American President. Barack Obama’s election marks the beginning of a new era in American history and politics. Here’s what some had to say about the results and the promise of Obama’s administration.

Neuvi Villanueva, 39 – Newark, NJ

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Herb Streng, 48  - Upper East Side, Manhattan

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Neil Chamberland, 27 – Greenpoint, Brooklyn

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Ann Mafae, 41  - Soho, Manhattan

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Letter to the Editor, The New York Times November 5th print edition, from Rev. Connell J. Maguire, Riviera Beach, FL: That day has dawned, the day dreamed of by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when a man is judged by the content of his character rather than by the color of his skin. …”

Of which man does Rev. Maguire speak?

I’m not being cheeky.  In fact, the question exhibits a lack of assumption that I wish more of the media had deployed both last night and throughout the election cycle.  Hopefully, they’ll master those assumptions over the next four years of practice.

Here’s my beef with reporters and editors: If you’re going to cover race, you can… nope, you should also speak to the roughly 85 percent of the country who isn’t black.

On November 4, in addition to camping out in Harlem and at Morehouse, the historically black college, the major networks could’ve planted reporters in predominantly white neighborhoods too.

John McCain, in his eloquent concession speech missed an opportunity to get it right.  The “special significance” and “special pride that must be theirs tonight” belongs not just to black Americans.  It is America’s and also belongs to white Americans.

What about the white Freedom Riders who’ve lived to see this election?  There’s also the little white boy or girl in the 1950s, forced to give up a black friend and conform or risk being ostracized?  Fast forward a bit: what about the whites who hunkered down in white flight neighborhoods like those in Long Island or the Detroit suburbs between the 1960s-1980s?  Or the infamous “white working class” voters in Appalachia territory?

If the coverage is tainted with what I’ll call, “Baby Boomer assumptions,” about race and racism then two main but truth-obscuring ideas flourish: 1) blacks support Obama simply because he’s black, rather than because he’s charismatic and qualified and 2) whites are miraculously, race-less, or worse, when they are race-full, it’s only because they’re racist.

The cost of skewed coverage is that Americans really are taken aback by each other November 4th–which means that we (blacks, whites, Asians, etc.) really don’t know each other.  And that the media hasn’t helped us in that regard.  It typically hasn’t covered stories, like this Christian Science Monitor piece, that show us how the country and our relations with each other have changed.

Back to Rev. Maguire’s Letter to the Editor: Suppose Martin Luther King, Jr. in this statement plucked from his 1963 March on Washington speech, also included white men and women?  Suppose he realized that whites also judged each other by the color of their skins rather than the content of their characters?

Perhaps voters, including those who abstained from the process on election day, were finally judging McCain by his character?

Just a thought.  But in the final analysis, it’s the questioning of long-held assumptions that matters more.

To many immigrants, Barack Obama’s story is an inspiration. They like him because he is the underdog, the kid with a funny name and a dark face who spent a part of his childhood in a Muslim country. They like him because he is a self-made man who today is standing at the threshold of the most powerful job in the world.

But among Russian immigrants, Senator Obama gets no love. At all. As much as it pains me, a Russian and a registered Democrat, to say it, many Russians have viewed Obama with nothing but suspicion and contempt. And even though Russians in New York are overwhelmingly Democrat, only 10 percent of them said they planned to vote for the Illinois senator, according to a soon to be published survey conducted by the Research Institute for New Americans (RINA). Meanwhile, a whopping 65 percent said they would vote for McCain. 

“It has nothing to do with race,” said Valery Grin, a Russian immigrant from Latvia, who plans to vote for McCain. “If Condi was on the ballot, I’d vote for her with two hands. She’s done more than Obama. He just talks. He hasn’t done anything in his career.”

The problem seems that Russians just can’t seem to take Obama seriously. To them he’s just a shpiglet, a young politician who hasn’t paid his dues.

For Grin, who lives in Rockaway Beach and is unaffiliated with any political party, the fear is that America under President Obama will be just like the Soviet Union, with government controlling all aspects of life, from jobs to healthcare to education.

“I don’t believe what Obama says about taking from the rich and redistributing to the rest,” says Grin. “The person who’s going to be distributing the wealth will be sure to pocket some of it. We’ve seen it happen in Russia.”

Dima, a 35-year-old Russian-American who lives in Brooklyn, also doesn’t plan on voting for Obama. He says the Dems’ candidate leaves a bad taste in his mouth because he somehow manages to associate with all the wrong people.

“He’s a figure who presents himself as a unifier, but in reality is highly divisive…If we take McCain, he’s a middle Republican. Obama, on the other hand is extremely left.”

Another issue that’s on the mind of many Russians is Israel, says Sam Kliger, director of Russian Jewish affairs at American Jewish Committee, which conducted the new study together with RINA. 

“For Russians, Israel is not just some country in the Middle East,” says Kliger, himself an emigre from the former Soviet Union. “They take it very personally because they have relatives there. So whoever supports Israel is their guy.”

But where does this notion that Obama is anti-Israel come from? He has repeatedly said he backs Israel’s decision not to negotiate with Hamas and that he supports a two-state solution. 

Just because he’s not backing the radical Jewish settlers, doesn’t mean he’s automatically anti-Israel. C’mon people.

More than that, Russians side with McCain because they believe he is more qualified on the security front. After all, he fought in Vietnam and knows the dangers of Communism. Never mind that the war makes them cringe. To Russian emigres in the U.S., the war in Iraq is essentially a war against terror and must be conducted no matter what.

In addition, many Russians see McCain as an extension of Reagan’s legacy, says Kliger. “They remember in 1982 when Reagan (on a trip to the USSR to conduct talks on arms reduction) stood up and proclaimed the Soviet Union an evil empire. That was a turning point for many people.” 

While I understand my compatriots’ fears, I also think they’re also outdated. We’re living in a different world than the one Reagan shook his finger at, one where things like the Internet and the mass migration of people requires a different kind of tactic. It requires flexibility, a global perspective and yes, a willingness to sit down and talk with people who don’t agree with us. I believe Barack Obama offers this and although his story might not be exactly the same as ours, Russian-Americans have far more in common with the candidate than we realize. We are both immigrants with funny names Americans can’t always pronounce, who work hard to make a mark for ourselves in the U.S. And although it’s impossible for Obama to speak for all of us, all the time, his message of hope and unity should resound more with immigrants than that of McCain, who, among other things, will cut benefits so many Russian immigrants (especially pensioners) are the beneficiaries of, privatize health care and continue an unwinnable war, “even if takes 100 more years.”

In the last week, journalists and opinionators have been talking up some variant of the question: How will blacks react if Barack Obama loses?  My response: Does it matter?

Supporters listen to Obama at a town-hall event in McKeesport, Pa. ( Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA-Corbis)

Our economy is in fetal position.  In two presidential debates–the shining examples of transparency and access that they were–both candidates avoided the word, sacrifice, like its very utterance would pox the American consumer.  The word doesn’t jive with our other national pasttime but folks in Indiana, for example, have been sacrificing for a minute now.

Compared to Indiana Joe Sixpack, at least the New York Times’ Everyman still has the normalcy of his genteel fears.  Really, when are the genteel not scared of something?  Millions of Americans have been complaining for years, of: losing their one car; making the false choice between health care for themselves or their children; declining wages; a disappearing job market, much less a disappearing job; affording college.  With the nation in triage, the NYT’s Everyman worry seems quaint by comparison.

And so does, at least as reported by Newsweek, TIME, and the Washington Post and discussed in the black blogosphere, a racialized preoccupation with an Obama loss.  This isn’t the 1960s.  While race is a factor, it’s not the underlying tension feeding the nation’s partisan rancor.  I’d venture that the only color that rational voters care about these days, is, green–especially as it relates to health care, jobs and Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, recent media coverage of the “What if” question favors the more romantic narrative arc of “the children of slaves,” “firehoses and police dogs” and “rising hopes, finally.”  Cue the cliffhanging score by Spike Lee’s favorite composer Terence Blanchard, please.  Will rioting follow? Will whites be proven as racists after all?  Will blacks fall en masse into a depressive swoon never to recover again?  I can’t help but feel like a desire for drama is partially influencing how media is framing a Barack Obama loss.

And I get it.  Great story.  Great story.  But is the made-for-TV-movie “children of slaves” narrative obscuring more than it reveals?  Real life, certainly, isn’t that simple.  More than that though, based on the issues driving this election cycle and historical moment, why does black reaction to an Obama loss matter?

What are other ways for journalists to cover the “What if Obama loses?” question?

Is the “children of slaves” angle the only way to cover race while answering that question?

1940s, Researcher Kenneth Clark looks on as boy chooses white over the black doll

Last night I learned that I automatically prefer light-skinned over dark-skinned people and that I have a strong automatic preference for European Americans over African Americans. I’m a brown-skinned black woman.  And a Leo.  Of course I (strongly! and automatically!) prefer myself!  This internal argument about my own racial prejudices is what I get for following Atlantic blogger-reporter, Marc Ambinder’s advice. Um.  Yippee?

In this election, simply mentioning “The Bradley Effect” neutralizes polling results that measure racial attitudes and their impact on voting. (CBS News recently looked at The Bradley Effect here but check out this 2006 Ellis Cose article to see how the same questions repeat as though time hasn’t passed).

It’s no surprise then, that media outlets have been foraging for a new way, other than polling, to answer this election’s trillion dollar question–Will Obama lose the race because of his race?–and as Ambinder writes, the AP has found one. Which led me to take the related Implicit Association Test, which “proved” my unconscious association of “good” with white or light-skin.

The theory behind the IATs (you can test yourself on gender, race, politics, etc) is similar to the heartbreaking doll test used in 1954 to help win Brown v. Board of Ed and desegregate public schools.

A 2006 short film, A Girl Like Me, recreates the 1940s study with, again, depressing results.

2006, Filmmaker Kiri Davis recreates the doll test

I write about my IAT now, not because I’m bothered by my results.  (The test may not measure what I believe, so much as what I’ve been taught to believe or, taught to react to).

What interests me is the extent to which Americans are paying attention to this race stuff.  Without a doubt, even with its many conversational lowpoints, this election is the longest–perhaps since the Civil Rights era–that this country has meditated on race.

That’s gotta be a good thing, right?

What do you think?

If you’re gassy from the hot air that’s Blimping out a super long election season, last night’s SNL skit offered much-needed relief.  (Tell me that Tina Fey’s nasal north-of-Fargo accent isn’t a dead-ringer for Sarah Palin’s Alaskan drone?)

As I was cracking up on my couch though, it struck me that conservatives weren’t.  Or at least, that’s the impression given if you watched the RNC in St. Paul and if you listen to this guy, dese guys, and that guy.

But liberals aren’t the only folks disturbed by Palin’s half-a-page resume.  Some conservatives are grinning and bearing it.

David Frum, diary-ing (er, not blogging?) for the National Review Online, asks many of the same questions that I have of Sarah Palin.  Best lines: “We have no idea whether [Sarah Palin] is decisive or vacillating, prompt or procrastinating, curious or incurious. These things matter enormously in a president. Yet they do not matter much to [conservatives]. And that’s a big problem.”

Frum continues to express wariness after (cue the Monday Night Football music) The Interview.

HuffPo columnist Thomas B. Edsall’s pull-quotes of conservative dissent are so great, you’ve got to read them on his page.

Another National Review columnist, Byron York, quoted in today’s Frank Rich column in the NYT expressed an opinion on many lib minds: “If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.”

And Charles Krauthammer at The Washington Post states it plain: just like Obama, Sarah’s not ready.

Taking one for the team (again) must be tough for the right–especially after the last four years of Bush.