Black Voices Are Vital to Democracy. The Media Must Stop Firing Them.

Put these retrenchments together, and you have a very hostile environment for Black journalists. The political right is trying to basically outlaw any discussion of racial inequality—and news organizations are trying to appease the political right. So while the circumstances differ in these cases, Attiah, Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Robinson, and I are all gone from The Washington Post; Joy Reid was stripped of her show on MSNBC; and Charles Blow left The New York Times. Many other Black journalists tell me privately that their roles are diminished from a few years ago, with editors much less willing to publish and promote their work.

I am obviously very personally invested in the plight of Black political journalists. These are my peers and, in some cases, my close friends. But my concerns are much deeper than whether I or my friends lose prestigious jobs. (I quickly landed at TNR after leaving the Post.) The U.S. remains a place where being Black too often means that you are less likely to have a job with good pay and health insurance and more likely to be the victim of racial discrimination. It’s also a place where our commitment to democratic norms and principles increasingly pales in comparison to other nations. Black journalists, like Black activists and politicians, are often the people in their profession most willing to discuss America’s shortcomings forthrightly and urge the country to do better. For example, Attiah and Reid were two of the most prominent voices at their organizations calling for the United States to change its policies toward Israel to prevent the mass deaths of Palestinian civilians.

Our reckonings on racism and journalism didn’t go too far. The opposite is true—they didn’t go far enough. And the diminishment of prominent Black journalists is the latest indication that a period of progress in the U.S. has ended and a period of retrenchment is in full bloom. An America where Black people, journalists, and Black journalists lose political power is one where inequality, racism, authoritarianism and other ills will be rampant. Institutions such as the Post may be done with reckoning with their shortcomings, but the rest of us should carry forward the ideas and ideals of 2014–2021.