By Kristian Hernandez
Borderzine
EL PASO — A modern day champion for a free press, fighting to maintain and safeguard the lessons learned and taught by persons of color in the history of American journalism made his way south to this border city.
Latino author and journalist Joseph Torres stood before students at the University of Texas at El Paso on April 17 and asked them, “Who was Ruben Salazar?” The classroom full of aspiring young Latino journalist grew silent.
Surprised by their silence, he explained how a boy from their own border town became one of the most important Chicano journalists in the 1960’s and how his voice was violently silenced in 1970 by police in Los Angeles.
“What most people don’t know about him is that he tried to organize the Latino community and journalists to become activists to create change,” said Torres before reading a rare quote by Salazar that could be a clue to the speculations surrounding his death.
“There is much bitterness in our Mexican-American community, gentlemen. An ever increasing bitterness about school systems that psychologically mutilate the Chicano child, against certain police who habitually harass our brown brothers, against local and federal governments that apparently respond only to violence,” Torres read quoting Salazar. “Consequently there are some Chicanos who have finally concluded that we must have a Watts-type riot to catch your attention and force the establishment to pay heave.”
Torres’ new book, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, which he co-authored with New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzales is full of these leaders of color who have helped shape the media world, but who are left out of the pages of most history books.
The seven-year endeavor of researching and digging up the past was not only educate and empower people of color but according to Torres it was also important to him that, “we tell our own stories.”
“The only images you see of us is being dehumanized and marginalized, so it is hard to make progress on the issues we care about,” Torres said.
Just like Salazar, Torrez believes that media at its best can play an important role advocating for social justice, but historically it has served to divide and discriminate against people of color in the United States.
“Journalists of color are the last hired and the first fired,” Torres said referring to the disparity in newsrooms all across the nation where according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors the percentage of minority employees has been dropping since its peak at 14 percent in 2006.
This 400-page book traces…
Finish reading The struggle for ethnic parity in U.S. media started with the American Revolution
