by Dr. Boyce Watkins
Respected journalist Sherrell Stewart noted today that Time Magazine somehow concluded that African Americans had nothing to do with the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2011. In a special commemorative edition released by the magazine this week, there were no African Americans featured on any of the 64 pages in the issue. One has to wonder just how much research has gone into remembering that all Americans suffered during 9/11, not just the white ones.
This is not the first time that Time Magazine has been caught in the middle of racial controversy. Earlier this year, TIME Magazine Editor-at-Large Mark Halperin referred to President Obama as a “d*ck” on national television. If Halperin was part of the team that helped to create this issue, then everything sort of makes sense.
This issue of TIME reminds me of all the other “wishful thinking” that occurs in modern media, like those science fiction movies that portray a time 200 years in the future where black people don’t exist. There is also the peculiar white washing of history, where black people didn’t exist during the American revolution, the Civil War or World War II. Of course we didn’t invent anything, since it’s clear that we were too busy eating chicken and playing basketball.
But TIME is not the only media outlet that has reduced the African American presence during 9/11 to mere ashes. I became friends with Jason Thomas out of Ohio, who was one of the first Marines to respond to the tragedy, helping to save several victims in the process. When everyone else was running from the towers, Thomas ran toward them.
Thomas was featured in the film “World Trade Center,” starring Nicolas Cage. But it turns out that Oliver Stone felt that Thomas’ character should be a white guy. Stone’s people told me that they didn’t know that Thomas was black. One might expect that with all the volumes of research that goes into making a Hollywood blockbuster film, such a significant oversight is actually not an oversight at all. In other words, there are even cases when deliberate white-washing takes place, reminding us that white supremacy is more than just an unconscious artifact of institutionalized racism.
Thus far, TIME has not commented on the fact that they chose to ignore the experience of 36 million Americans. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that there wasn’t a single black person on the committee that decided which stories to include in the commemorative issue. When TIME finally has a chance to mull over the pros and cons of doing the right thing, they should walk out the door and issue an apology to all of us. We are readers of TIME Magazine, we are patriotic, and we also shed tears on September 11, 2001. Yes, TIME Magazine, we are also Americans.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.
