Possibilities Abound in a Nation That Is Diverse, CNN Journalist Says

Possibilities Abound in a Nation That Is Diverse, CNN Journalist Says

Yale News
2009-11-20

Susan Gonzalez

When CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien was growing up, her mother in­structed her never to let anyone tell her that she wasn’t black or Hispanic because of her mixed ethnic and racial heritage.

So, when she was asked to identify her race on official forms, O’Brien — the daughter of a black Cuban mother and an Irish-Australian father — refused to check just one box, even when making a single selection was required, she told a packed auditorium in the Law School’s Levinson Auditorium during her Poynter Fellowship Lecture on Nov. 10.

America’s value lies in its diversity, O’Brien said, and that mixture of races and ethnicities should never be viewed as a “problem.”…

…Likewise, when O’Brien — also a Harvard graduate — was first applying for jobs as a journalist, one news director told her that there was only one spot open for a black person but that she wasn’t dark enough to qualify. Another news director asked if she would consider changing her name because it was too difficult to pronounce. On both occasions, her mother pointed out that these were jobs her daughter wouldn’t want anyway.

O’Brien said that her parents served as examples of perseverance who encouraged their children to look beyond challenges and focus on possibilities, instilling in them this message: “Dream and do what you want; push and achieve what you want; go and get what you want.”

Her own children, the journalist said, have become so used to diversity in their lives that they were shocked to discover that Barack Obama is America’s first black president.

“Diversity to me is an opportunity to think differently and to see differently,” she told her audience…

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