Diversity Diaries: Jim Slusher
By Jim Slusher Assistant managing editor/staff development, The Daily Herald, Arlington Heights, Ill.
12.22.01
I was a young reporter in northwestern Illinois working on a series about Southeast Asian refugees during the "boat people" era of the late '70s. Among the "official" sources I interviewed was a man — he had immigrated a couple of years earlier from Vietnam — running a community-service program helping immigrants find housing and jobs. During one interview at his office, we were talking about the many different regions from which families settling in the area had originated, and in the course of the conversation he mentioned something that kind of astonished me, a white born and bred in the country.
"Of course, we can tell by looking at each other where people came from," he said.
"Oh, really?" I asked, thinking that generally I wouldn't know an Iowan from a Tennessean merely by looks. "How?"
His face went blank and he turned away his eyes. "Well, that's not important. I really couldn't explain," he mumbled, then abruptly changed the subject.
I had to work to concentrate on the rest of the interview. I was guilt-ridden that my bumpkin-ism had led me to accidentally issue the "Oh? I thought you all look alike" insult. I feared that my question had embarrassed him, and I felt ashamed of myself for asking it. We did finish the interview and several others over the next couple of weeks, and the series that resulted turned out quite nicely, I felt.
Yet of all the questions and conversations I asked that source 25 years ago, the only exchange that specifically has stayed with me is this one. There must be something meaningful in that fact. I have learned to forgive myself for my naivete, and I even have come to realize that pressing him on the issue would have better helped me understand and describe the people I was writing about.
But most of all, I've come to realize how questions I believe to be "innocent" can be dramatic to others. Asking embarrassing questions is something of a reporter's stock in trade. This exchange, though, helped me learn more about when and how to ask them.