The senior class at McGavock High School has invited the TV news media to its school this morning for something other than a fight or other negative incidents.
The students are angered by the TV media's focus on negatives at the school. I know how they feel. I attended a predominantly black high school, and the TV media only came out for fights at our school. And those fights only involved a few hotheads. Yet the whole school's image got tarnished.
The problem with TV and print media decisionmakers is that the public is dealing with white journalists of a different economic class. Their experiences are narrow. They suffer from a poverty of experiences.
The only people they have relationships with in their lives are probably people like them. Look at The Tennessean's list of officials on the bottom of its editorial page. Until two months ago, it was all white folks in a city with a black population of 25%. Incredibly outrageous.
Their children are most likely going to go to private school. It is even that way with politicians. Mayor Karl Dean sends his children to private school. So did Gov. Phil Bredesen. So did VP Al Gore and President Bill Clinton. And these folks are all Democrats.
The Hispanic community in Nashville gets covered from arrest to arrest and deportation to deportation. Yet when it comes to miraculous positives like Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church and all the good that continues inside, the media doesn't care.
And if you look on the outside of the church and other businesses along Nolensville Road, there are no gang symbols on the building sides. Yet the CityPaper only reports on the MS-13 gang, leaving the impression that those few people of Hispanic descent represent us all.
So as far as the public image of your school, good McGavock students, the odds are against you. The people who control image-making in this city are not like you, and they have no desire to change.
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