Who Is She?

Farai Chideya

The worst crisis we face today is not in our cities or neighborhoods, but in our minds.
- Farai Chideya

Farai Chideya is a journalist and author. In 1997, Newsweek named her to its "Century Club" of 100 people to watch.

Chideya is the anchor of "Pure Oxygen," a prime time show on Oxygen, a new women's network started by Oprah Winfrey, Gerry Laybourne and Marcy Carsey, three of the most powerful women in television. From 1997-1999, Chideya was an ABC News correspondent covering a range of issues from youth to race to politics. In 1996 Chideya spent the Presidential election season as a CNN Political Analyst and was named to the New York Daily News' "Dream Team" of political reporters and commentators.

At age 25, she published her much-acclaimed stereotype-shattering 1995 book, Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African-Americans (Plume Penguin), is now in its eighth printing. Using statistics, she systematically undercuts the argument that African-Americans are at the root of problems like crime, welfare and drugs. In 1999, William Morrow published her second book, The Color of Our Future. From an Indian reservation to South Central L.A., the 99% white heartland to multi-racial Southern California, Chideya interviews and analyzes the lives of today's diverse teens and twenty-somethings.

Chideya writes a political column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate which is published in newspapers across the country. In addition to running the website Pop & Politics (www.popandpolitics.com), Chideya is helping to launch a global community online.

From 1994-96 she was a writer at MTV News, and from 1990 to 1994 she reported for Newsweek magazine in New York, Chicago and Washington, where her political coverage ranged from labor issues to following the President as a pool reporter on Air Force One. In 1996, Chideya completed a Freedom Forum Media Studies Center fellowship, examining why young Americans are tuning out the news.

Chideya has profiled white supremacists for Mademoiselle, examined child sexual abuse allegations for the Los Angeles Times, and written on affirmative action for The New York Times. Honors include winning a National Education Reporting award, a WIN Young Women of Achievement award and a GLAAD Award.

Farai Chideya: Chronicling Race and Youth in America
By Andrea N. Jones
Date : 04-02-1999

Farai Chideya is one of the hottest young journalists in the country. She uses her skills to put it down in magazines like Vibe or Time with equal ease. At age 25, she published her much-acclaimed first book, Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African-Americans. Now, at 29, Chideya is publishing her second book, The Color of our Future, which takes a look at the social landscape of youth in America.

Youth 15 to 25 make up the most racially diverse group of young people in the country's history. Demographic predictions say that by 2050, whites will cease to be a majority population in this country.

When talking about race, Chideya says she uses the terms "minority" and "majority" somewhat ironically, as she dislikes the terms at heart. She says it's important to realize that "when we talk about the majority in America" being of European descent, "it's also the minority in the rest of the world. When it comes to issues of race, "they are much bigger than our issues [in this country]."

Chideya spent a lot of time researching The Color of Our Future in California, a state she believes exemplifies the best and the worst in the future of race relations. "This state is almost 20 or 30 years ahead of the rest of the country in terms of a racial transformation," she says

Chideya believes that the two institutions that absolutely need to change before real equality can ever exist in this country are schools and prisons-two systems that miserably fail people of color, particularly Blacks and Latinos. She sees the prison system as the end to a long road that tracks people from childhood to lockdown.

I asked Chideya if she believes we can achieve real equality and unity under capitalism, a system that thrives on the concept of divide and conquer and on the existence of a large underclass. "This country is about the Benjamins-the bottom line," says Chideya. "[But] as tough as corporate America is, I think sometimes it's more accepting of change than the rest of the country."

In her book, she cites corporations like BankBoston and Timberland for participating in "cause-related marketing," a scheme on the part of corporations to "do good" and get fat tax breaks doing it. Call me skeptical, but I'm not convinced that corporate sponsorship will fend off the race war. I beg her to clarify. "It hasn't gone all the way, but [corporate America] adjusts to the extent that they need to in order to survive. Institutions like government don't do that," says Chideya.

As Chideya explains in The Color of our Future, the issue of identity in America has become more complex, and she believes it will continue to be a difficult issue for this country. For example, she looks at the population's unwillingness to let people define themselves on their own terms. In one chapter, Farai talks to multiethnic youth, all of whom have different orientations to race and thus define themselves very differently based on their experience. She advises that all ethnic groups be accepting of difference as opposed to being blind to it. "To me, the ideal is to be able to look at [people] and to evaluate them on their individual weaknesses and not necessarily see them as a stereotype," says Chideya.

Chideya struck me as an optimist. She believes integration should be America's goal, but she's no Pollyanna. She acknowledges that the real work is upon us to create harmony in a society that will soon have a population majority of non-whites, while a white minority controls most of the wealth. Chideya does her best to provide tools that will help with that work. In the final chapter of her new book, Chideya offers some solutions that should be helpful to anyone who is challenged by diversity.

The Color of Our Future will undoubtedly establish Chideya as an authority on youth, particularly youth of color, who are poorly understood in the media. As long as she continues to keep her finger right on the pulse of popular issues, Farai Chideya's fresh voice and perspective will continue to command attention.

Source:  www.popandpolitics.com
http://www.strongbat.com/farai.html
http://www.pacificnews.org/yo/stories/1999/19990402-chideya.html