Black Journalists and Covering the Storm That Never Passes ⇥ theroot.com

Danielle C. Belton, the Root:

We at The Root are fortunate in that we can comfort each other and find solace in our shared pain, but so many other black journalists at predominantly white-run media outlets don’t have this luxury — of someone asking if they are OK. Of someone asking, “do you need to take time off?” Of someone suggesting therapy or some other support to get through the crisis. Because often, to white people, this is just another news story. For us, this is our lives… and our deaths, displayed for public consumption, often without context or understanding.

As those exhausted look away for their own mental health, we cannot. We labor on because we have a cause bigger than ourselves. But it doesn’t mean we don’t turn to friends, family, colleagues and therapy to get through his, because we do. I ask for those consuming this news site and many, many other black journalists’ work understand that we are reporting while dealing with our own life-long post-traumatic stress from repeatedly bearing witness to our dehumanization and murder.