Wendy Bell’s stereotype-seeped post evidence of a divided Pittsburgh
I was recently having a conversation with a friend about movies. We both agreed that sometimes you just don’t want to be asked about your thoughts and feeling on a movie in the minutes, and even days, after viewing. These things take a while to ruminate, swirl around in the mind before I feel like I’ve come a conclusion on what I saw.
This often applies to life. And after a long gestation period, I am finally throwing my hat in the Wendy Bell ring.
I missed any mention of the former WTAE anchor and her now infamous, and deleted, March 21st Facebook post when she originally posted it. However, I was well aware of the horrific ambush murders of five adults and an unborn child in the small Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg that inspired the post. I figure Bell’s post missed my eyes because I don’t live in Pennsylvania anymore. The story didn’t reach me until a couple people on Facebook posted about her being fired from WTAE. To my amazement, they were quite upset.
It’s a story I’ve been thinking a lot about ever since. In part because of how many issues there are to unpack from a 600-word Facebook post and the fallout from it. But also because I feel like I have something to add to the conversation. It’s a subject that matters to me in part because I grew up about an hour outside Pittsburgh even if I’ve spent the last 10 years in California. It also matters because I am part of a mixed-race family. I felt I had something to contribute to the discussion because of both my familiarity with as well as my distance from Pittsburgh. And because it spoke to something I already knew: Pittsburgh is a place lacking diversity.
My first reaction had little to do with race.
Come on? TV news? Really, in 2016 you really should have better news sources than your evening news. Personally, I can’t imagine caring that some anchor lost her job rightly or wrongly.
I get people feel there’s some sort of innate connection with the anchor, like after watching these people night after night on the news that they somehow have become friends. But it’s false. The idea that Wendy Bell (or any other anchor), delivering a pointless story on say a revitalizing spritz before giving us a strong smile and then throwing it to weather, has something meaningful to say about just about anything is laughable.
But here we are.
But hey, enough about the failings of local TV news, let’s dive into that race stuff … said no one ever.
Whatever her intent, Bell was incredibly patronizing in her Facebook post. The stereotypes she uses only serve to dehumanize. She’s done little to reverse course with her “apology for offending” apology.
I’ll stay away from taking down Bell’s stereotypes blow-by-blow because it’s already been done quite eloquently by VerySmartBrothas.com editor-in-chief Damon Young here and here. I stand by everything he said in those posts, and I hope you’ll read them.
Bell’s words serve to divide, whether she meant it that way or not. And that’s a real problem because Pittsburgh is already pretty divided. I was dismayed at the way I saw several people talk about the issue. “She gets fired for telling the truth?!?” was a common refrain I saw. First, she isn’t telling the truth. Second, that is a frustrating mindset and one born of ignorance.
To me, one of Pittsburgh’s great downfalls is its pride.
We all like to brag about how great Pittsburgh is. How beautiful the view is coming out of the Fort Pitt Tunnel. Or how pretty the orange leaves are as the season changes to Autumn. Or, for some unknown reason, how unique our messed up colloquial dialect is.
But that pride puts up blinders. We can constantly brag about how the city is among the most livable. We can have a superiority complex over Cleveland — although, to be honest, that’s never going to get old.
But it’s just not perfect for everyone.
Far, far from it.
Pittsburgh very much has a diversity problem.
Search “Pittsburgh diversity” and you’ll find plenty of evidence. Take this May 2015 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article on a WalletHub study that ranked the city 227th out of 230 cities in diversity. So congrats, Pittsburgh. You’re beating Columbia, Missouri; Springfield, Missouri; Erie, Pennsylvania, and that’s it.
Or what about this Jan. 2016 Post-Gazette article?
Consider this statement: “The Pittsburgh region is a place that welcomes and embraces racially and ethnically diverse people.”
According to a report released Wednesday by local advocacy organizations, 76 percent of white residents agree that sentiment is true.
But conversely — and alarming to a panel of workforce experts — only 29 percent of African Americans believe the same.
The gulf in opinion was just one of the data points contained in the results of the Pittsburgh Regional Diversity Survey, which drew responses from about 3,500 respondents who answered an online questionnaire in August and September 2015.
Overall, the survey found, the Pittsburgh area lags behind other regions in promoting diversity in the workforce, and perceptions vary widely along racial lines on the importance that employers are placing on bringing in diverse candidates.
Perhaps it’s time to start listening to the disaffected rather than putting up those blinders. And look, I would argue this goes well beyond race. We could afford to be much more empathetic toward many in our society.
My eyes were certainly opened by Raymar Hampshire’s excellent post “Why I Left: Pittsburgh Has An Expiration Date.”
Hampshire arrived in Pittsburgh as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon. He left with an appreciation for the city but the strong feeling that it wasn’t nearly as livable as others have made it out to be.
The reality for me, and many other transplants, is that Pittsburgh has an expiration date. Pittsburgh was where I had some of my best memories. It’s where I fell in love with the arts, discovered pierogies, developed great friendships, met my future wife, and became a born again Steelers fan.
I came to Pittsburgh not knowing shit about Pittsburgh. As a Fellow, one of our first assignments was a community study of the Hill District. At this point, I had barely spent 48 hours in Pittsburgh. We interviewed politicians, residents, business owners, and developers over the course of a two weeks. It was here that I learned about the Crawford Grill, August Wilson, and how a historically Black neighborhood was ripped apart when the city needed space to build an arena, because hockey. At the end of our two-week-long study, each Fellow presented their findings during a community meeting at the Hill House. It was there that I stood up and said to audience of mostly white onlookers that the problem with the Hill District, is not the Hill District, but the city’s general lack of compassion and love for Black people. Here I was, the only Black man in a cohort of sixteen Fellows, parachuting into a new city with sealed boxes still sitting on my apartment floor, telling white people that the city didn’t care about Black people.
I still feel this way.
Perhaps you’re starting to see that there is a gulf between how well-meaning white folk see the city and how those of color do.
Bell’s comments aren’t even the most offensive in mainstream Pittsburgh media. Let’s not forget about Jack Kelly’s 2015 column the Post-Gazette ran in which he writes slavery wasn’t thaaaaat bad. Dude, fuck off. I think there’s a reasonable argument as to whether Bell needed to be fired or not. But Jack Kelly? He absolutely deserves to be fired. There’s misguided ideas and then there’s patently false bullshit.
Pittsburghers can revel in the fact that they are good people. That the city is really more of a wholesome town. We just aren’t like those other big cities.
But that doesn’t mean we’ve welcomed everyone equally. I don’t believe in most cases we’ve intentionally gone out of our way to do this, but the issues are real and systemic, and ignorance doesn’t make the situation any better.
I know all this because I see it through the eyes of my wife, Brandi, who is black. I am white. Our 21-month-old son is therefore biracial.
I left Pittsburgh in March 2006 for a job at a community newspaper in a desert town in California. Brandi left her hometown of Akron shortly afterward to join me. I think we were both looking for something new.
And California has become our home.
But as we’ve transitioned through our young adult lives, moving back to Pittsburgh has long been an option we’ve toyed with. My family still lives there and bugs me constantly about moving back. Pittsburgh has some positives going for it. For one, it’s not Akron, which Brandi has long crossed off the list of a places she’d like to return to. Sorry, Akron. However, diversity is important to both of us. It is even more important to us now that we have young mixed-race son.
This is not a box that Pittsburgh checks.
We feel there is a major benefit to being around different people from different backgrounds. You experience more. You learn more. And hopefully through that we build more inclusive societies. We all live in bubbles. We all have blinders. But diversity is one way to expand those bubbles as much as possible.
Plus, with diversity comes better food options, and if that’s not a reason to celebrate diversity, I don’t know what is.
While some of the problems with Pittsburgh would probably fly under my radar (see: White Privilege), I can see through Brandi’s eyes that there are aspects to the makeup of the city that just make her uncomfortable. Again, it’s a divided place.
Now, I could sit here and tell my wife that she’s seeing things, but that kind of seems like a bad idea. So opening my ears and listening seems like a good idea.
And her perspective makes absolute sense to me.
Bell’s comments, and the comments from many of those supporting her, only reinforce much of what both Brandi and I think about Pittsburgh.
I’d call my upbringing anything but diverse. My high school currently has a minority enrollment of 4 percent. I’m sure the stats weren’t much different when I was in high school more than a decade ago. Meanwhile, plenty of schools in our area of Southern California have majority minority enrollments. My son’s toddler room at daycare is more diverse than any classroom I was a part of K-12. It’s really not even close.
I mean, that’s just a staggering difference.
None of that is to say California is a perfect wonderland, but on this particular issue it’s worlds away from my experience in Western Pennsylvania. So we likely won’t be moving back to Pittsburgh anytime soon. A decision like that is bigger than one issue, but diversity plays a significant role.
I write this not as someone who wants to slag Pittsburgh. I have a profound appreciation for the city. I will be back for trips to see my family. Its sports teams will always be my teams. I look forward to teaching my young son about the many good parts of the city and region while also not ignoring its problems.
So what can you do?
Listening would be a great place to start.
Considering where this whole story began, perhaps choosing better information sources than local TV news is something to consider. Along with being generally terrible, local TV news has long misrepresented the black community.
Choose. Better. Sources. Read verysmartbrothas.com. Read Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Reading not your thing? Watch the Nightly Show, which frequently has excellent segments on race.
Need rich, visual storytelling? Watch the “The Wire.” Want something musical? Listen to Kendrick Lamar.
And finally, just try to have a little (preferably a lot of) empathy.
