The Nation just published a hit piece on three Black writers
Et tu, the Nation?
Last year, MTV News’ editorial director Dan Fierman added a fresh crop of smart and talented writers of color to the masthead. Ira Madison (known as It’s Burned. on Medium) joined from New York Magazine. In addition to launching Lena Dunham’s hugely popular newsletter Lenny Letter, Doreen St. Felix’s background before joining MTV includes writing for the New York Times and the New Yorker. Ezekiel Kweku wrote a regular sports column at Vice before staffing up with MTV.
They may seem talented and qualified, but don’t be fooled. Because the Nation’s Wei Tchou, says St. Felix, Kweku, and Madison’s “legitimacy” doesn’t actually come from “prestigious résumés” or “Ivy League degrees.” Instead, she argues, they were only hired for their “well-oiled personal brand[s]” and Twitter popularity. Being popular on Twitter has become a “stand-in for an intellectual perspective,” she argues. Rather than genuine talent or perspective, these younger Black writers simply peddle “identity politics” to become successful:
Fierman’s new recruits comprised a range of high-profile writers who largely fit into one of two categories: alumni of establishment publications (Brian Phillips from Grantland, Jamil Smith from The New Republic, Ana Marie Cox from The New York Times Magazine), and young activist-writers entrenched in identity politics (Ezekiel Kweku, Doreen St. Félix, and Ira Madison III). While these groups are ostensibly in opposition — the latter often being critical of the former — they do have one thing in common, which makes clearer why Fierman axed the original staff: They possess a reputational legitimacy that the prior staff lacked. Among the more established new hires, this legitimacy is defined concretely by their prestigious résumés, their Ivy League degrees, and their ASME awards. In the younger hires, however, legitimacy amounts to something different and less articulable: a well-oiled personal brand (today’s stand-in for an intellectual perspective) and, especially, a popular Twitter following.
What she’s basically arguing is that while some staffers on MTV News’ masthead are Serious Journalists with Serious Credentials and Something Serious to Say, if you’re young, Black, and popular, you’re merely a Twitter star, even if you have those very same Serious Credentials. If you’re thinking, “Gee, that sounds kind of racist,” it’s probably because this is a racist thing to assume about a journalist.
There’s a whole lot wrong here.
She dismisses MTV News’ young writers as lacking in pedigree when compared to their established Ivy League-educated counterparts, apparently unaware that St. Felix has a degree from Brown and that Madison completed a Master’s degree at NYU. If she does not consider Madison’s alma mater New York Magazine to be “established,” I’d be curious to know which outlets she does consider established.
In her piece, Tchou claims that for all MTV News’ strides in putting together a diverse masthead full of women and young people of color, it’s not really worthwhile because instead of producing good writing, they’re only publishing “superficial riffs on identity politics.” And while folks have been speaking up bout the overwhelming whiteness of media and publishing, “concerns about hapless token hiring and lowering the bar of quality just to fulfill an undefined diversity quota loom large.” Her argument is clear: MTV News’ gaggle of token unqualified diversity hires has dragged down the site’s quality.
Tchou is right that Madison regularly writes a cheeky series called Delete Your Account wherein he calls out celebrities for being dumb. But he publishes those funny pop culture takes alongside writing like his heart-wrenching ode James Baldwin, Moonlight, and Black gay manhood (If you haven’t read it, you should pause, read it right now, then ask yourself if you believe Madison to be a writer lacking in “intellectual perspective.”)
Kweku has spent the last few post-election weeks churning out smart writing on electoral politics and I can personally confirm that his pieces about the future of the Democratic Party have been passed around online circles of longtime Democratic operatives and strategists.
Tchou argues their writing provides a “toothless look at the world” when it really ought to be reflecting and interpreting. But again, it’s difficult for me to imagine that she wrote that after having read pieces like St. Felix’s on Black theology, President Elect Trump, and Reverend Jeremiah Wright which does just that. And even when St. Felix does write about popular culture, she does so with substance and talent. Her breathtaking piece on Rihanna, Caribbean culture, and patois has been pretty widely regarded by “established” outlets as a masterpiece. NPR said it was “excellent” and the Huffington Post included it in its list of The Most Important Writing From People Of Color In 2015 alongside Claudia Rankine and Ta-Nehisi Coates. But somehow these successes don’t count because these writers are young, Black, and popular on social media. So surely they must be dragging down the quality of the site.
Like many, Tchou is assuming if you’re young and Black you have somehow grifted your way into success. You couldn’t possibly be deserving of your position or have gotten them on the basis of your talent or education. Rather, it must have been some sheen, some frothy frivolous thing that made up for your lack of merit and somehow made your presence palatable. You’re simply a diversity hire, like some brown window dressing to make everyone feel better.
And that isn’t to say that there isn’t some productive conversation to be had around tokenization in media or corporately funded media functioning as PR. But this piece pretends to go about the business of unpacking all that while actually just trashing three specific writers for no real reason. As Columbia educated and supremely talented journalist Christiana A Mbakwe reminds:
At this critical moment in United States history, public conversations about the commodification of diversity are needed; however awkward they may be. We must work through them using our intellect, rather than our emotions, using the tools that underpin sound journalism — fairness, integrity and rigor. For this reason, I applaud the author of the piece for tackling this topic at this time. Sadly, it manages to subtly and explicitly delegitimize voices that are both necessary and important. It implies they are merely diversity hires with bloated Twitter followings, rather than smart, engaging writers who cover a variety of topics with breadth and depth. I cannot speak for the author’s intention, but it’s telling that none of the loaded and insidious assertions that masquerade as analysis, are rooted in reporting. It is easy to opine but I think for a subject of this sensitivity and importance, had more balanced reporting occurred, the writer may have come to a different conclusion.
That kind of nuance and balance is nowhere to be found in this piece.
Shortly after the election, the Nation joined other investigative outlets in putting out a call for donations to protect their brand of progressive journalism in preparation for a Trump presidency. Is publishing a takedown of three Black MTV writers really the kind of writing the Nation thinks people need right now?
Frankly, many of these outlets are blowing it when it comes to writing about race. This should be a time for media outlets to get their collective shit together when it comes to writing about Black folks, not double down on tired anti-Black cliches about “identity politics” and diversity hires. Because Trump’s policy positions create a unique threat for people of color, writing well about race is going to be critically important. Why should we trust that these outlets and writers are up to the task when they seem hell bent on proving they are not?
It should come as no surprise to anyone that we’ve reached a point in our media landscape where clicks are king and publishing an inflammatory hate read can be a useful tool for generating ad money, but to do so at the expense of talented Black journalists is unforgivable.
When I asked Madison if he had anything to add about Tchou’s piece, he said:
If controversy is what she needed for views, I’m glad I could help.
