ABSTRACT
Print media is a site of production and contestation for race and equity talk in local communities. It produces and reproduces, constitutes and re-inscribes ideas about how the world is racially organized, and about how race and racism are to be understood and acted upon, particularly in the arenas of education and schooling. Print media professionals powerfully shape public discourse through choice of words, pictures, topics, placement of articles, and framing of storylines (Richardson, 2007). Local community members also work hard to shape this discursive arena through opinion pieces and letters to the editor, and through direct communication of their criticism and demands for journalistic integrity, as well as by bestowing their praise and recognition. This article examines how a liberal-progressive college town community in the USA wrestles with race, racism, and school equity in the public arena of print media. Specifically, we examine how two local newspapers represent and constitute race and racism through various forms of race talk. We inquire into the tensions, limitations, and possibilities for race-conscious and social justice-oriented discourse to exist in the face of both explicit racial hate speech and benevolent liberal race talk. On 10 December 2010, the Ithaca Times printed an unsigned opinion piece in its local
weekly newspaper serving Ithaca, a small/rural city in central New York. The title of the editorial, ‘$175K is too much’, referenced the salary of the newly appointed superintendent of the Ithaca City School District (ICSD). The opinion piece criticized the district’s appointment of an African American man, arguing that race played a role in his
selection. ‘To the school board: Please, please, don’t tell us you bent over backward to hire this guy just because he’s black’. The piece went on to make the argument that poverty and class were the real issues, and ended with an unsubstantiated projection of the new superintendent: ‘Real equity is going to have to start with making sure all the kids in the district get an equal shot, whether black, white, immigrant, or any other minority. This move doesn’t do it’. This opinion piece drew community outrage. In the seven letters to the editor that were
published on 15 December 2010, the editorial was referred to as ‘racist’, ‘race-baiting’, ‘offensive’, and ‘unacceptable’. Quotes from three of the letters are excerpted below:
. Your editorial ‘$175,000 Is Too Much’ is offensive, racist, race-baiting, and poorly researched… To claim that the school board hired him only because he’s black is deeply offensive and presumptuous… It sounds a lot to me like you are suggesting Black people should step back quietly into their ‘place’ because even when they rise to positions of leadership and power it won’t change anything.
