The New York Times In Black & WhiteGerald Boyd, former managing editor of The New York Times, died a year ago Thanksgiving Day from lung cancer. And to mark the occasion, New York Magazine has decided that they want to back up the hearse to his grave, dig the brotha up and burying him all over again.
African American scribe Les Payne breaks it down for us. The nearly 7,000-word article disinters the scandal that got the 58-year-old sacked along with the paper's top editor, Howell Raines. Writer Jeff Coplon was careful in crafting his report, which lands on target and manages to spatter blood. The story, however, lacks the virtue of coming clean about those at the Times who, however unwittingly, prepared Boyd for the fall that some considered as needless as it was inevitable.
Boyd rose higher than any known Black editor at the august newspaper. I say "known" because one of the earliest Black writers at the Times kept his racial identity a total secret. As with light-complexioned African-Americans who desegregated other institutions with stealth, Anatole Broyard, a former literary critic at the Times, reasoned, perhaps wisely, that his rise would be best served if the men running the paper thought that he was white like them. No such editor has been uncovered playing Broyard's skin game.
Still, it was disingenuous for Max Frankel, then the top editor, to set Boyd up on an executive track in 1990, telling him in so many words, as Coplon writes, that he would be the Times' Jackie Robinson. The Brooklyn Dodgers infielder broke baseball's lily-white barrier, while Boyd was preceded by others at the paper. Frankel reportedly "warned" Boyd that white colleagues would resent his promotion "because" he was black. By describing Frankel as having played Branch Rickey to Boyd's Robinson, Coplon imbues the Times' motivation with an enlightened sense of racial fair play.
The truth - which New York magazine completely omits - is that the Times was under court order to further desegregate its editorial staff. The paper settled the racial discrimination suit, Rosario et al. v. The New York Times, in 1980 for more than $1 million and a promise to do better. In the early 1980s, however, the court warned the Times in writing that A.M. Rosenthal, the editor later ousted to make way for Frankel, had failed to live up to the signed agreement.
So it was the Rosario consent decree that boosted Boyd, not goodwill from the Times or altruism on the part of Max Frankel. This is not to diminish Boyd's talent and hard work. For if Anatole Broyard's racial passing proves anything, it is that meritocracy works for blacks at the Times only when the bosses don't know you're African-American.
Frankel, as quoted by Cop-lon, admitted to selecting Boyd primarily for his "equanimity ... for white establishment settings," a curious qualification that's never required of white candidates. "He didn't bear some of the anger and hostility that were visible in other people."
Boyd had pushed more aggressively on racial matters at his hometown St. Louis paper, but corked his emotions to succeed at the Times. Here it was required that blacks grant white Times bosses their innocence on matters racial in exchange for personal advancement. The ambitious Boyd rocketed through the ranks as much for the specificity of his loyalty as for the generality of his race.
When reporter Jayson Blair defiled the Times with a blizzard of fabricated stories the paper published, Boyd was slandered - and sacked - as the alleged protector of this twisted little con artist, who happened to be black. Deserving African-American subordinates knew better, for Boyd had long prided himself in not being the brothers' keeper. Even after his firing, he boasted to the National Association of Black Journalists: "I was not the black managing editor. I was the managing editor."
With Boyd gone from his high perch, the Times has recovered from the affirmative effects of the Rosario consent decree. In a city nearly a third African-American, The New York Times, for example, covers the 75 percent black NFL and the 15 percent white NBA with a huge sports staff that among its editors, reporters and columnists fields only a single, black staffer, the columnist Bill Rhoden. There is a word that describes this pattern of coverage the Rosario suit addressed, but out of respect for Boyd's deep and unrequited love for the Times, I will not use the "r" word here. [Newsday]
African American scribe Les Payne breaks it down for us. The nearly 7,000-word article disinters the scandal that got the 58-year-old sacked along with the paper's top editor, Howell Raines. Writer Jeff Coplon was careful in crafting his report, which lands on target and manages to spatter blood. The story, however, lacks the virtue of coming clean about those at the Times who, however unwittingly, prepared Boyd for the fall that some considered as needless as it was inevitable.
Boyd rose higher than any known Black editor at the august newspaper. I say "known" because one of the earliest Black writers at the Times kept his racial identity a total secret. As with light-complexioned African-Americans who desegregated other institutions with stealth, Anatole Broyard, a former literary critic at the Times, reasoned, perhaps wisely, that his rise would be best served if the men running the paper thought that he was white like them. No such editor has been uncovered playing Broyard's skin game.
Still, it was disingenuous for Max Frankel, then the top editor, to set Boyd up on an executive track in 1990, telling him in so many words, as Coplon writes, that he would be the Times' Jackie Robinson. The Brooklyn Dodgers infielder broke baseball's lily-white barrier, while Boyd was preceded by others at the paper. Frankel reportedly "warned" Boyd that white colleagues would resent his promotion "because" he was black. By describing Frankel as having played Branch Rickey to Boyd's Robinson, Coplon imbues the Times' motivation with an enlightened sense of racial fair play.
The truth - which New York magazine completely omits - is that the Times was under court order to further desegregate its editorial staff. The paper settled the racial discrimination suit, Rosario et al. v. The New York Times, in 1980 for more than $1 million and a promise to do better. In the early 1980s, however, the court warned the Times in writing that A.M. Rosenthal, the editor later ousted to make way for Frankel, had failed to live up to the signed agreement.
So it was the Rosario consent decree that boosted Boyd, not goodwill from the Times or altruism on the part of Max Frankel. This is not to diminish Boyd's talent and hard work. For if Anatole Broyard's racial passing proves anything, it is that meritocracy works for blacks at the Times only when the bosses don't know you're African-American.
Frankel, as quoted by Cop-lon, admitted to selecting Boyd primarily for his "equanimity ... for white establishment settings," a curious qualification that's never required of white candidates. "He didn't bear some of the anger and hostility that were visible in other people."
Boyd had pushed more aggressively on racial matters at his hometown St. Louis paper, but corked his emotions to succeed at the Times. Here it was required that blacks grant white Times bosses their innocence on matters racial in exchange for personal advancement. The ambitious Boyd rocketed through the ranks as much for the specificity of his loyalty as for the generality of his race.
When reporter Jayson Blair defiled the Times with a blizzard of fabricated stories the paper published, Boyd was slandered - and sacked - as the alleged protector of this twisted little con artist, who happened to be black. Deserving African-American subordinates knew better, for Boyd had long prided himself in not being the brothers' keeper. Even after his firing, he boasted to the National Association of Black Journalists: "I was not the black managing editor. I was the managing editor."
With Boyd gone from his high perch, the Times has recovered from the affirmative effects of the Rosario consent decree. In a city nearly a third African-American, The New York Times, for example, covers the 75 percent black NFL and the 15 percent white NBA with a huge sports staff that among its editors, reporters and columnists fields only a single, black staffer, the columnist Bill Rhoden. There is a word that describes this pattern of coverage the Rosario suit addressed, but out of respect for Boyd's deep and unrequited love for the Times, I will not use the "r" word here. [Newsday]