JOURNALISM

I Called Out Racism During A Job Interview For A Newspaper. Here’s What Happened.

The cost of representation may be high but the cost of not being true to oneself is far higher

Photo by Rhamely on Unsplash

Everything I needed to know about racism in the mainstream media, I experienced viscerally on a single afternoon. It was a balmy day and I had been called in for an assessment centre. By the time it was over, I felt numb. Hunkering down on the carpet-covered floor of my local library, laptop precariously tilted, cursor blinking on a still empty GoogleDoc, I allowed myself one moment of consternation tinged with embarrassed pain before putting up ‘my emotional wall’. I had to function because there was still one task to go (an editorial on a topic of my choice), to be finished within the hour. Was I going to get this position? No. But I’ve never gone down without fighting and so fight I did.

I’d been good. Not blow it out of the park good, like I was a few months later, when I had the good fortune to both love the employer as well as vibe with the hiring managers, but good enough. My elevator pitch was spot on, my answers smooth (to finicky, technical questions such as ‘What do you think will be the role of AI in journalism?’)-I even managed, on the spot, to come up with a great…