Black guys are better in bed than white guys.
A useful generalization? Anything but. A racial stereotype? Certainly. A subject worthy of nine minutes of CBC Radio airtime? Ummmmmmm.
I, for one, almost fell out of my chair last Thursday morning when, just before eight o'clock, a sloppily-produced radio documentary took over the CBO Morning signal under the guise of "Pirate Radio." A weekly summer feature designed to introduce listeners to unconventional, some might say unprofessional, journalism, Pirate Radio uses freelance journalists such as Kim Brunhuber, a recent graduate of Carleton's journalism school, to produce segments that provoke as much as inform. This Brunhuber did, in spades, with his black and white look at sexual stereotypes in Ottawa.
The piece consisted of dozens of brief clips recorded at Byward Market clubs, of young white women and young black men commenting on why the two groups are attracted to each other. The consensus was the women believe the men make better sexual partners, while the men enjoy the money and easy sex showered on them by the women. Some women are so obsessed with getting laid in color that they willingly surrender their credit cards to the men. The men are also accused of treating the women poorly, taking their money, doing their thing, and then discarding them in favor of another target.
Now, the fact that young people find the idea of exotic sex intriguing is hardly news. Anyone who's spend a few months traveling abroad knows how easy it is to awaken the xenophile buried within a reserved at-home personality. Some think there's more to it.
Like many, I was skeptical. The piece contained no contextual setting or numbers to suggest a size for this subculture. At first, it sounded like nothing more than a glorification of black sexual prowess. But Brunhuber and CBO associate producer Nancy Payne both make good cases for the item.
"It's a subject that's been much documented," Brunhuber said a few days after the airing of the piece. "I just chose to do it in a local perspective." Black himself, Brunhuber says he is familiar with the scenes depicted in his documentary and believes they should be exposed. What we're talking about, after all, are racial stereotypes that can only serve to divide ethnic groups, stereotypes on which some youth act. "I think that's a very interesting observation worthy of journalistic inquiry," he said.
Payne said she was "uncomfortable" and "amazed that those attitudes are out there," and she isn't alone. Those who don't frequent the Blue Planet and Cachet probably thought such nonsense evaporated decades ago. They were wrong, and it's hard to make a good case against an investigation.
"If we ignore something that discomfits us politically, does that not equate to ignoring the continuing power imbalances in our society due to race and sex?" asked Payne in a letter she wrote after our interview.
I suspect much of the unease felt by listeners comes from the medium as much as the message. We simply don't expect to hear such stuff on CBC. Not without a disclaimer or an accompaying panel discussion. "I think the callers were surprised and even angry that we didn't pass judgment on what we described, instead of reporting it," wrote Payne.
She's probably right. Maybe it's time we started thinking for ourselves.
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With the notable exceptions of Toronto and Winnipeg, the daily newspaper markets in most major urban centers in Canada are dominated by the Southam Newspaper Group. The Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette, the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province, the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, and a dozen more.So when strange things start happening at Southam's main editorial headquarters, eyebrows should rise.
First, there was the dismissal of three of the best journalists at the chain's wire service. Two weeks ago, desk editor Joan Ramsay and reporters Ian Austen and Dave Todd received a letter calling them to a hotel room, where they were fired. According to one of the three, the only reason given was that they "just didn't fit in" anymore.
This is strange because Ramsay was widely considered one of the best editors at the organization. Austen was a capable and knowledgeable reporter whose telecommunications beat is arguably the most important field in late twentieth-century Western culture. Todd's environment and development stories were among the most insightful and informative in the country.
Second, Kirk LaPointe, until a few months ago the Ottawa bureau chief for Canadian Press, was hired as the new chief editor at Southam. At the same time, Citizen editor Jim Travers, Southam's acting editor for the past four months, said the service would begin to move toward stories more "unique to Southam." Other Southam employees suggest privately that they will focus more on analysis and backgrounders rather than breaking news coverage.
Separately, the hiring and the shift make sense. Not together. Sure, "Captain Kirk" is cracker-jack editor, but he made his name at the country's primary breaking news source. Does Southam really have a coherent strategy? I fear not.
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