Diversity Diaries: Deborah Gump
By Deborah Gump
Knight Professor of News Editing, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University
12.28.01
In Marin, Calif., there are only two communities of significant color: Marin City, where about the only subsidized housing is, and the Canal Area, where immigrant Hispanics tended to congregate. After I had worked at the Marin Independent Journal for about five years, I edited a brief about a community celebration in Marin City to which "all are invited."
So I decided I would go as an individual, not as a representative of the paper. I walked into the community hall, and I was the only white person in a room of 150 blacks.
Now, I had lived in Washington, D.C., partly so I would be in the minority for a change, and I thought I was prepared to feel isolated. But never have I felt more isolated than at that gathering. I initiated small talk with a few people as I wandered around, but people tended to move away from me as I approached a group. I got my food and sat down at a table, where a group was eating. When they finished, I was left alone at that table as new arrivals sat, it seemed to me, at any table other than mine.
I left fairly quickly, and while I didn't consider myself shunned, I definitely felt unwanted. I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, other than 1) it was a learning experience to be the cultural "outsider" and 2) perhaps the "insiders" felt I was being a tourist, which was rude. There's a fine line between appearing to be on a sociological field trip and getting to know another group, and I think I stomped all over it.