Dissing
Juneteenth
What’s
Wrong With The Buffalo News
By Michael I. Niman, ArtVoice 6/27/02
Juneteenth, a celebration of African-American history and the
emancipation of American slaves, is my favorite Buffalo festival.
Ours is the third largest Juneteenth celebration in the country.
It puts us on the map. The
parade is quirky and full of personality – with children’s drill and step
teams making up half the parade. It’s
a welcome relief from the jingoistic militarism and ersatz patriotism that’s
been both homogenizing and ruining parades by the score.
At Juneteenth there’s live music, dancing, poetry slams, children’s
tents, a first rate step competition, an ever-evolving African crafts market and
fantastic food (It’s worth going just for the Kirkland family bar-b-que). I like it so much, this year I invited my five-year-old
nephew and my ten-year-old niece to accompany me to Juneteenth.
Where are the
White Folks?
But there’s something weird about Juneteenth – it’s the
near-absolute absence of white folks. I’d
like to say it’s inexplicable, but it’s not.
Buffalo is what demographers refer to as a “hyper-segregated”
metropolitan area. We’re firmly
planted among the top ten most segregated cities in the country.
White people make an annual Easter pilgrimage to the Broadway Market.
Otherwise, they steer clear of the East Side.
True, it’s their loss. By
avoiding the East Side they’re missing out on some of Buffalo’s best
restaurants and shopping. But it
also poisons our city. This
impromptu boycott of the East Side undermines struggling inner-city businesses
while strengthening a culture of segregation and racism.
When my sister-in-law in Central New York told her next-door neighbor
about the family’s plans to go to Buffalo to celebrate Juneteenth, the
neighbor, a Grand Island native with strong family ties to Western New York,
warned her that “Juneteenth is no place to take children – it’s not a
family event.” To my
sister-in-law’s credit, she just looked at her neighbor in a confused manner
and packed her kids off to Buffalo. Juneteenth
is not for kids? What a ludicrous
thing to say. Juneteenth is all
about kids. It’s far and away the
most kid-friendly parade in Buffalo. Absent
are the drunks that mar Delaware Avenue parades with their brawls and aggressive
behavior. Also absent are the
hordes of cotton candy and fried dough hucksters peddling sugar and grease to
children. In their place are
interactive events for children to participate in, a crowd that understands the
event and is there to celebrate, and a plethora of ethnic foods prepared by a
host of local chefs.
Liberal Racists
So what’s this shit about Juneteenth not being a family event? Where’s this coming from?
The answer is painfully simple. It
goes beyond ignorance. It’s
racism pure and simple. The hordes
of quacking ducks that populate the Allentown “Art” festival (“quack quack
quack, you lock the car? quack quack, got the credit card?, quack
quack, oh those look at those shepherd’s hooks, quack quack
quack…”) don’t venture east of Main Street.
Juneteenth is a black event. The
East Side is where black people live. White
racists avoid black people. Many
deny their own racism, calling themselves “liberal.”
Their deeds, however, speak louder than their mouths.
Their actions support a segregated society. There will be no healing until people confront their own
racism. Given her words, it’s
clear to me that my sister-in-law’s neighbor is a racist.
In a segregated society, people often don’t meet folks who are
different from themselves. Locked
away in the prisons of their own homes, white people in segregated communities
often rely on the mass media for a window into what they think is black culture.
What they often get, however, is a corporate bastardization, more
resembling a minstrel show than authentic black culture.
With time, they come to believe that the world of pimps, hos and ganstas
they see on TV and in the movies is real.
Then there’s the Buffalo News.
A monopoly daily paper in a segregated city should try to build bridges
rather than strengthen walls. When
it comes to race relations, however, the Buffalo News is still a wall
builder. Last year I criticized The
News for failing to highlight Juneteenth in its Gusto entertainment
section. The entertainment editor,
Mark Sommer, later explained that Juneteenth is an annual event, not a unique
one-time special event, hence it couldn’t get cover-story coverage every year.
We argued back and forth about this, but fair enough, Sommer was
following a rational formula, even if I disagreed with his priorities.
This year Juneteenth made the cover of Gusto, with a series of
good articles in the entertainment section as well.
Sommer and his staff deserve praise for giving good quality coverage to
one of Buffalo’s best annual events. I’d
be quite happy if the story ended here. But
it doesn’t.
Phantom Face
Off
On Sunday, June 16th – day two of the Juneteenth festival,
the Buffalo News, on the front page of the City section, ran a Juneteenth
story under the heading, “Motorcycles make merry at Juneteenth fest.”
Whatever goodwill and community building Sommer and his staff did with
their entertainment section articles was quickly undone, probably unbeknownst to
Sommer, by the City Desk.
Their story didn’t begin with
the food, the music, the children or the dance or poetry competitions.
It began like this: “More than a dozen motorcycles kicked up dirt,
smoke and dust as they burned rubber, making thick black marks on the pavement
of Best Street while leading the parade…”
Paragraph two was about two motorcyclists “facing off in the middle of
the street with their front tires bumping each other, holding up the
parade…” Paragraph three
purportedly quoted a parade participant who explained, “They’re at war with
each other, just playing around.” For
three quarters of The News’ readers,
who, according to statistics, probably won’t read beyond paragraph three,
that’s the whole story – end of story.
The story, written by Angelica
Morrison, painted a stereotypical picture of the East Side – one dominated by
conflict and confrontation. This
story of bikers dusting parade watchers as they burned rubber, while in no way
describing the myriad events of Juneteenth, serves to reinforce the ill-informed
decision thousands of Buffalonians
made when they decided not to come to Juneteenth.
With three paragraphs of mis-information, both Juneteenth and the East
Side were brutally dismissed as mired in chaos.
Reality Check
It’s time for a reality check. The conflict Morrison opens her article with never took place. Yes, motorcycles led the Juneteenth parade. But they were not in any way “holding up the parade.” To the contrary, their pace was a bit too quick. Hence, the police and parade marshals held up the lead bikes for a few minutes so the parade ranks could tighten before they approached the waiting crowds. Yes, the bikes circled around while waiting, maybe even bumping wheels, but there was no conflict of any sort in these Shrineresque antics. And there was no dust storm. This was a non event. Morrison was no more than a voyeur, watching guys waiting for the parade to begin.
It’s standard journalistic practice to pyramid a story – reporters are well aware of the short attention spans of their readers and try to upload the most important facts of a story near the beginning. With this in mind, Morrison’s reportage is truly bizarre. But more importantly, it’s fear mongering as well.
COPYRIGHT 2002
Dr. Michael I. Niman’s previous ArtVoice columns are
archived at http://mediastudy.com.
