A caller just charged C-Span with sustaining "institutional racism"

A fellow called into Washington Journal this morning and charged that there is still deep institutional racism in this country and citing statistics he had kept charged C-Span with contributing to it. He said (I paraphrase) that he had kept track and that on average Washington Journal has about 90 guests per month, but that of those 90 typically only 6 are black. He said that during national black awareness month there were even fewer, I believe he said three for that month.

That was an amazing revelation to me, I do not think of C-Span as being part of the problem of racism in this country or supporting it at any level. But there were the fellow's numbers, and I have no reason to think he tried to mislead anyone. A comment like that from a viewer is sure to cause quite a stir at C-Span, as well it should, but what do you think about it? For one thing is that statistic he kept a reasonable indicator to use to make his point?

...conclusions.

I think pundits, authors, legislators, and the rest of the pool of guests are underrepresented, so the 6 out of 90 doesn't surprise me.

However, factoring in some of the wingnut guests I manage to catch being given airtime on the CSPAN channels, sometime I suspect an agenda unfriendly to progressive causes.

:shrug:

of sexes as well. I wonder if they had one black woman or no black women.

The program doesn't pretend to be an agent of change that I know of, not like DemocracyNow!, which is always shaking things up and bringing on marginalized people and asking them for their story, their view. So, the caller is right but it's sort of self evident, even built in to the mission of the show.

I haven't thought of WJ as covering the status quo, but I think that is a good way to look at it or at least to keep in mind as a part of how they operate. The way I have viewed it was coverage of the verge of change, because while they are always footed in the present the conversation is always directed to either today's immediate influences on the body politic or to views on the changes on the immediate plate. So today they will cover the hurricane and several months ago they covered the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords as examples of "immediate influence" matters but interviews of politicians on upcoming legislation as an example of their other charge, the coverage of things soon to be before the Congress, the President, or the Court.

and that is valuable, imo.

My complaint with them is on the BookTv side, where Brian Lamb schedules three hour interviews with right wing personalities who are not really writers and who have never contributed a single idea to our culture -- "In Depth with Anne Coulter" is a contradiction in terms. lol

I have seen real time cgi revisions, looped tapes to hide protests and a real bias supporting conservatives.

C-Span should have 11.34 black guests per month (given an average of 90 guests total)

There is a dearth of African Americans in high tech. Then again, there are also very low numbers of them in engineering school, well below national demographics. Should we blame the companies? They can not hire what does not exist.

Be interesting to take a similar survey about coverage in Sports Illustrated or ESPN products.

6% or less sounds correct. Institutional racism is alive and well.

is so deeply ingrained even well meaning people are racist and don't know it..............

Not every oversight is racist. Many are just a lack of minority representation.

But I agree that these things need to be addressed. First of all, women represent half the population and have had to fight to be included. Other minorities have had to fight too. But it's not all about outright 'misogyny' or 'racism' per se.