Alone in a Crowd

by Daryl Gale

Every year the Pennsylvania Society of Newspaper Editors holds its annual Keystone Awards Banquet, honoring what it considers the outstanding achievements in journalism for the past year. It was at this banquet last Saturday at the Hilton in Harrisburg that I got my customary cold slap of reality along with the pork medallions and strawberry pie.

That reality is this: I was the only black man in the room not carrying a tray of food. This happens a lot more often than you can imagine, but never fails to strike a lonesome chord deep within my black consciousness. I was one of the few black photojournalists in the United States Coast Guard, and the only one to work at Navy Times. Even now, in the safe and comfortable environs of City Paper, I’m the only one that looks like me working full-time in the newsroom.

I know what you’re thinking: "So what? You should be proud of your accomplishments and stop your bellyaching, you ungrateful troublemaker! People like you always see the glass as half empty! The mere fact that YOU keep getting in these places is a clear indication that things are getting better."

Well, there are some valid points there, and it’s an absolute fact that I’m an ungrateful troublemaker. But a large part of whether you see the glass as half empty or half full depends on whether you’re the guy who already had a drink, or the guy who’s thirsty.

White folks at the banquet, and here at the paper, are unfailingly nice to me, and never, ever give an indication that my presence is either unwelcome or a token gesture of political correctness. I’m here because I’m a good journalist, and my bosses like my work. Period. So why do I still get that nagging, feelin’-like-Rosa-Parks sensation? Why do I get the uneasy notion that the 300 some-odd people in the banquet room at the Hilton took as much notice as I did, but were too polite to mention it?

I turned to one of my colleagues, John Sherlock of the Daily News, and mentioned my singular blackness save the waiters. He smiled and answered, "Yeah, but the waitstaff is all black! Isn’t that discrimination too?" We laughed a bit, and I got his point, but the feeling didn’t go away. Probably because I’m not talking about discrimination here, so much as the blind acceptance of blacks in some positions as opposed to others. How many people there noticed the black guy getting an award, but not the one pouring their coffee? And while we’re at it, how about this? Look me in the eye and tell me that most white people can enter a room with 300 blacks and not feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. Every year Morehouse College or Grambling or Southern or any number of other predominantly black schools will graduate one or two whites. Take a look at the class pictures sometime. Your eye is immediately drawn to the white guy standing out like a sore thumb. I always wonder what those four years were like for that guy. What will he tell people years from now about his college experience?

All of which is a roundabout way of making a point I’m not even sure I can make: that we all feel self-conscious when we’re the only one. The only woman in an all-male setting probably feels the same way, and double-checks to make sure she’s not showing too much cleavage or revealing too much leg the same way I monitor my speech patterns and carefully choose my words at functions like Saturday’s banquet. Seeing a friend across the room, I would smile and nod my acknowledgment, as opposed to yelling, "Whaassssuup!"

We throw the word diversity around as though in and of itself diversity will solve all our social ills. But how diverse are we really? Are one or two white students at a black college "diverse"? Is one black journalist at an awards banquet "a diverse crowd"? How many of one group or the other is necessary to be considered "diverse"? Should I have noted that there were more than a dozen blacks in the room, instead of focusing on the fact that they were all in a serving capacity? Maybe. But in the end, for me at least, diversity is an ideal, not a tangible thing to be accomplished with more or fewer numbers. You have to feel equal to be equal. And while I normally feel every bit as equal as any of my white brethren in this business, Saturday I felt a little lonely. Next year, if you see me at the awards banquet, don’t walk up and shake my hand. Yell "Whaassssuup!" from across the room.

Daryl Gale is a City Paper staff writer. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (800 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper news editor, 123 Chestnut St., Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.