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Journalist Soledad O'Brien tells personal story of race in America
By SARAH LEHR
YOUNGSTOWN
Soledad O’Brien’s Afro-Cuban mother and Australian father married in 1958 after they met attending Catholic Mass in Baltimore. Back then, interracial marriage was still illegal in Maryland and many other states, and when the couple walked down the street, people spat in their faces.
As a child, O’Brien heard about these experiences and reacted with horror. Her mother’s response, however, was simply, “Lovey, we knew America was better than that.”
O’Brien said she took her mother’s words to heart and used the philosophy behind them to drive her reporting.
The anchor, producer and CEO of her own media company has covered bleak topics ranging from Hurricane Katrina to post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans, but says she still sees hope.
Through CNN, O’Brien released two documentary series about race, “Black in America” and “Latino in America.”
During her talk Wednesday in Stambaugh Auditorium on the city’s North Side, O’Brien shared clips from “Black in America” pertaining to police violence and educational disparities.
Much of her reporting focuses on class, race or gender-based inequity — a subject, she says, Americans don’t like to talk about.
“It’s an uncomfortable topic, I think, because we like to pretend that the American dream is very evenly applied if you just work hard [and] pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” she said.
Race, according to O’Brien, is America’s ultimate taboo. Despite recent Gallup polling indicating that more Americans view race relations as a major problem, O’Brien remains optimistic. Now, she says, Americans are talking about race, which is essential, even if it’s not pretty.
“I understand why people don’t like talking about race,” O’Brien said during a press conference before her presentation.
“I’ve had to be the token black person at a lot of events and it’s not fun. You don’t want to feel like you’re always whining about race and a white person doesn’t want to feel like they’re automatically an oppressor.”
Youngstown State University’s Centofanti Symposium sponsored O’Brien’s presentation.
During a question and answer session, one young woman asked for an answer to Youngstown’s poverty and specifically cited inadequate education.
O’Brien responded with the example of Union City, N.J. Union City’s solution to a failing school system was a boring story because there was no magic bullet, O’Brien said.
“They simply invested in their schools and invested in their teachers,” she said. “And they didn’t use their schools as a political football.”
The crowd met that statement with applause.