“To Be An American: Identity, Race And Justice” - Listening Tour

 

The “Matter of Fact Listening Tour,” hosted by Soledad O’Brien, continues its exploration of difficult issues surrounding race and equity in a new digital presentation, “To Be An American: Identity, Race And Justice.”

Throughout the 90-minute program, a diverse lineup of guests from academia, literature and entertainment will share personal stories, essays and insights to bring greater understanding to the complex topic of race, identity and belonging. “Matter of Fact” contributors Jessica Gomez and Joie Chen will provide reports and interviews from around the country, while veteran journalist Ray Suarez will chronicle the history of Chinese Americans who helped build U.S. railroads but were denied citizenship. Viewers will be challenged to address questions such as, “What unites the United States, and what is it that truly makes America exceptional?” The program will open with a citizenship pop quiz, which encourages viewers to think about what those not born in this country must learn in order to become Americans. 

Watch the special at matteroffact.tv

Soledad O'Brien Interview - Rolling Stone

Longform interview by Jamil Smith for Rolling Stone talking with Soledad O'Brien about race and gender in media, covering Trump, and the role of social media in journalism.

Two Tales of Interracial Couples in the 1950s

Loving is a film about the outlawed marriage between a black woman and a white man in 1958 Virginia. It will open on November 4, but that story is one that journalist Soledad O'Brien has known since childhood. She knows the story because her Afro-Cuban mother and Irish-Australian father endured much of the same hostility.

Soledad's parents, both immigrants, met at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland in 1958 and married in 1959. Interracial marriage was illegal in Maryland then, so the couple was married in Washington, D.C. As in the film, it was a time when an interracial couple couldn't get served in restaurants together and people were very intentionally trying to keep interracial couples apart.

In a story from The Hollywood Reporter, Soledad tells about her parents story.

"My older sisters were born in Maryland, which, like Virginia, was under an anti-miscegenation law, and my mom told me people would spit on them as they walked down the street. Even when my family moved to New York, where I was born, it was hard to get housing. But my parents never talked about that while we grew up. They didn't want that to frame how we thought about our community. They were quiet activists but felt they were on the right side of history."

Soledad says that she is hoping to watch Loving with her dad but that her parents (who will celebrate their 58th wedding anniversary in December) live more in today than in the past.

Encouraging More Conversations About Race

Excerpts from an interview with Soledad O'Brien on Essence.com

You have to gather people together to have really tough and thoughtful conversations. You’re never going to solve any issues around race by not talking about it. You have to really have awkward, uncomfortable conversations about access, equity and white supremacy. It’s kind of a step forward that (this is) something we’re even discussing. If you want innovation in thought, you have to tackle some tough questions that deal with data and statistics that we know are pretty bad...

Many times, I’ve done a panel on immigration that had no Latinos; a panel on race that had no black people; a panel on women that had no women. I’m interested in making sure the conversations we’re having include the people who are embedded in that conversation.

You would think by watching television that every economist is a 65 year old white guy. But really, there’s women who are economists. There are people of color who are economists. They also have perspectives on what is happening in America and we can elevate those conversations.

Soledad O'Brien In Q Commons Simulcast Tonight

Q Commons began as a single conference before spinning off local franchises, in the same way that TED Talks did, and on February 26 three “global” speakers—author Malcolm Gladwell, journalist Soledad O’Brien, and television producer Mark Burnett—will make a live simulcast to 10,000 people in 75 cities around the world


In the inaugural Q event last October, more than 10,000 people in some 60 cities globally participated.

The 'Q' in Q Commons stands for questions as a way to engage audiences in dialogue around tough issues facing many of our communities.

Soledad O'Brien, who often covers race relations, will be one of the presenters for the national simulcast.

Did Soledad O’Brien "School" CBS host Bob Schieffer?

The headline reads "Soledad O’Brien schools CBS host: Black protesters deserve to ‘survive an interaction with police’" and goes on to describe how Soledad tried to explain to Schieffer that the protests over law enforcement “criminalizing” black communities were about much more than the recent deaths of black men in Missouri and New York.

“Anybody who thinks that what is happening right now [with the protests across the country] is only about Eric Garner, is only about Michael Brown is really missing what is happening in black America,” she pointed out. “African-Americans feel that they are treated differently in the criminal justice system, they are treated differently under the law.”

“There is this aggressive targeting of black people,” O’Brien added. “That doesn’t happen in white communities, and it’s that anger over so many years that is really percolating up now.”

In her recent CNN documentary Black in America: Black and Blue, she found that 90 percent of the 5 million stop-and-frisk stops in New York City never resulted in arrests.

“Those people had done nothing,” she explained. “So 90 percent of the blacks and Latinos that were stopped in stop-and-frisks in New York City didn’t do anything. Imagine what that does psychically to a culture if you ‘fit the description,’ which means you’re black, male, 19 to 25.”

“I think the challenge is that it’s not being applied proportionally,” O’Brien declared. “For example, if you are arresting and stopping people where many of them haven’t done anything, you create a culture in that community — even a high-crime community — where people feel like they are being criminalized, even those — as we saw in our documentary — who haven’t done anything.”

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