Oracle Online

I watched like everyone else as the disturbing images were piped into all of our homes by any means necessary of Hurricane Katrina’s tantrum in the Gulf two weeks ago. I was horrified just like everyone else, but I had special ties to the tragedy. I am originally from Atlanta and my grandfather was born and raised in northern Louisiana. I had instant feelings of grief that were intensified by the fact that one of my oldest friends from undergraduate school, Vance Vaucresson, a fourth-generation family business owner of Vaucresson Sausage Company 1.5 miles from the Vieux Carre, lost everything but their lives and I knew it.

I, however, unlike everyone else, despite feeling so close to what was happening, wondered why there were no black journalists reporting on the story from the mainstream media outlets. For me, it was an added offense in addition to the failure to evacuate the largely poor black neighborhoods like the 9 Ward. It was like talking about me as if I wasn’t there in the room.

When Oprah went on TV live the Monday after, she redeemed herself as a real journalist telling a story with a voice that up to that moment hadn’t been told. We no longer had to hear about what the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, was saying, he said it himself. Oprah arrived only a few short hours after police Superintendent, Eddie Compass, had heard about the suicide of one of his officers. We heard his account from him. The absence of black journalists telling the stories made me wonder if we had really made any inroads at all in the field. It made me ask the question would there really be work for me out there to tell our stories to the world.

It made me go looking. First, I went to all the major news outlets; NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, FOX. I could have sworn that there were some of us out there; nothing. A friend told me they thought they saw one. Then I went to the local networks; still nothing. My next stop was to the National Association of Black Journalists website, where I found well over 15 links to print stories by black journalists, including one about a black journalist for the St.Petersburg Times who was shot while on assignment.

There are often conversations in recent times about issues of diversity, cultural sensitivity and the like. This is a perfect example of why it is just a conversation. Let us tell our own stories. Does anyone have any idea how insulting it is to have some one else talking about what is happening to you?

Lurelia Freeman
Post-baccalaureate Student