National Public Radio is worried that it sounds “too white.” This moral panic is inspired by a report from Chenjerai Kumanyika, a black Clemson professor and hip-hop artist, who wrote that in his role as a public-radio contributor he feels pressured “to be consistent with culturally dominant ‘white’ styles of speech and narration.” Then came the headlines: “Challenging the whiteness of public radio,” “Does public radio sound too white?” etc.
First the facts: NPR is very, very white: At about 77 percent white, its newsroom is significantly whiter than the country at large — but not nearly as white as its audience, which is pushing 90 percent white. The rice selection at Whole Foods is not nearly that white. And of course these aren’t just any white people, but super-white whitey white people, the pale and diffident Sidwell Friends answer to Shaft and Superfly, except nonfictional: college graduates (more than one in four went to grad school, too, and I’d bet there’s a disproportionate share of MFAs in creative writing), middle-aged, high-income, power-walking, overseas-vacationing, and overwhelmingly not Republican, with members of Team GOP composing only 17 percent of NPR’s listenership. You know these white people: aspiring Canadians, basically. You can practically hear the chunky black-framed spectacles rattling out there in Subarus across the fruited plain to the sounds of Wycliffe Gordon’s famous and flatulent All Things Considered brass riff.
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