BECAUSE THERE WAS A GWEN IFILL--I Am Free To Be Me

If you had asked me two years ago what it would mean to have 66,000 followers on a social media platform, I might have guessed it would involve Kool-Aid and a remote, wooded commune. Yet today I am a certified writer on LinkedIn, and for some reason I keep getting alerts saying that from some different spot on the globe, some new potential friend or colleague or ally or troll or mentor or mentee has just "followed" me.

I used to just shrug as the numbers grew. There would be plenty of time "some day" to write about various topics, on a regular schedule. The words formed in my brain, but I was too flustered to pry them out. I am in transition from nearly a decade in East Africa mentoring and training young journalists, and for some reason, I'd almost forgotten what it's like to be me, to let what's inside my head come scrolling out onto my computer screen.

But today as I sat on a bench at the Charlotte Transportation Center waiting for the 16W, I clicked on my phone's Facebook app and almost fainted. After last week, I feared I had no more emotions left to spew. But reading about Gwen Ifill’s death at age 61 has blasted a cavern into many hearts. …and in the soul of what’s left of American journalism.

It's a blow I won’t soon recover from. And yet I must…because there was a Gwen Ifill.

You see, because there was a Gwen Ifill, a small town girl from the Midwest who landed at the Washington Post for an internship in 1984, too intimidated and shy to communicate above much more than a whisper, was able to square her shoulders and somehow muddle through. She saw a woman striding through that legendary newsroom who looked like her, and so anything was possible.

Because there was a Gwen Ifill, that girl-turned-national reporter for Knight Ridder Washington was able to participate several times on a CNN news program featuring all-women commentators back in the mid-90’s. By that point, Gwen had started reporting for NBC News. Watching her in action, I believed I could not only appear on camera for a major network, but that I might even have something to say.

Because there was a Gwen Ifill, I realized that you didn’t have to be blonde or blue-eyed, or a fair-skinned African American, to be on TV. You could have dark-brown skin, and you could be cool, calm and comfortable in it.

Because there was a Gwen Ifill, I understood that intellect, wit, keen insights and articulate banter weren’t solely the purview of white men and women in broadcast journalism. I studied her grace, her deft interviewing skill, her seamless delivery, and I knew that it was possible to look like me and do the same thing.

Because there was a Gwen Ifill, all those Sunday morning news analysis forums on TV opened up to people who looked like me. Through her eyes, I pondered issues in the news and gave myself the space to form my own opinions, and to regurgitate them based on who I am, from my own perspective.

Because there was a Gwen Ifill, my journalistic ambitions, hopes and dreams could blossom. The girl who was weaned on Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite and Woodward and Bernstein could imagine herself standing shoulder to shoulder among other young journalism dreamers, all believing we could speak truth to power, give voice to the voiceless, be intellectually adept. We could walk through the doors of the Sacramento Bee or the St. Petersburg Times, and though there might be challenges, and though some might say we were there just to fill a quota, we could stay the course and prove our mettle, not so much to anyone else in the newsroom, but to our mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and communities and ancestors who had paved the way for us to be there.

I am back in America, living in Charlotte, North Carolina, in a country where at least half the populace is still dazed, nearly hamstrung by anxiety. I have something to say. I have a place to say it.

So over the din of the shards of what’s left of my heart as they crunch beneath my lurching footsteps, I now declare that because there was a Gwen Ifill, I will not break. God gave Gwen Ifill a voice, and she used it, full-throated. We who follow in her footsteps must not whisper, must not hesitate or second-guess ourselves. Because little black and brown girls and boys will always need to see more people who look like them sitting in extraordinary venues, toe to toe with the most powerful in the land, clear-eyed, gazes level, so that they too will one day be unbowed, full-throated.