Soledad O'Brien: Change Is in the Wind
Obama isn't doing it, CNN reporter says -- people are
After a busy week spent covering the presidential inauguration, CNN reporter Soledad O'Brien came to Duke to share her own experiences breaking journalism's glass ceiling on Thursday night. Audience members packed Griffith Theater, to hear the television journalist reflect on her career and how the country is changing.
"When you grow up named Maria de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien you can't help but talk about diversity," she told the packed crowd. Her name, loosely translated, means, "the Virgin Mary of solitude." O'Brien spoke as part of Duke's Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration.
Last summer, CNN aired O'Brien's documentary series, "Black in America," which examined the current state of black America 40 years after King's assassination. The 6-hour series exposed various problems that exist within the black community. She plans to complete a follow-up series next summer focusing on solutions.
"Diversity is not easy; it's very, very, very challenging," O'Brien said after showing clips from her series. "Even in our [Black in America] editorial meetings there were unpleasant conversations. With a diverse group, there's yelling and arguing. It's not a comfortable tight box, but the end result will have multiple visions."
As a young journalist, O'Brien said she encountered several obstacles because of her gender and ethnicity. The daughter of a black Cuban mother and a white Australian father, the Harvard grad was asked by a television station manager to consider changing her name early in her career. Another told her there was only one spot for a black journalist at the station, concerned that she wasn't "dark enough" to pass.
"When people put up obstacles, you go around them," O'Brien said. "It's not easy to be judged in one glance."
She said that "change is in the wind," and not just because the country elected the first black president. "Nothing changed on Wednesday [the day after the inauguration]. What changed was the way to access hope. -- Our problems won't be solved by one guy. It takes all of us," O'Brien said. "Both Obama and King operated under the notion that our nation has the ability to change. It's an amazing thing to be able to course correct."
As a journalist, O'Brien said she does not intend to sugarcoat issues of race, ethnicity and gender. "To make real change, you have to confront the truth. I'm more concerned about being real" and doing "nuanced, smart, good journalism that's thought-provoking and represents a wide-range of viewpoints. It never really occurred to me that I was doing journalism for a certain group of people -- I'm just trying to do really good stories that make us all human."
Her efforts have made her a role model for girls and young women such as first-year students Imara Hoyte and Ijeoma Agu.
"I thought she was a phenomenal speaker. Very powerful and inspirational," Agu said. Hoyte agreed, adding that she enjoyed hearing about O'Brien's experiences covering stories such as the tsunami in Thailand and Hurricane Katrina.