Activism

California Awards Ceremony Celebrates the Best of Ethnic Journalism

“Ethnic media has quickly become an increasingly indispensable bridge for communicating with diverse populations within our state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at the opening ceremony.

Published

4 years ago

June 11, 2021

Christy Price

AbsolutVision; Business Paper

Some 30 ethnic media journalists were honored for their coverage of the epic events of 2020 at a virtual California Ethnic Media Awards ceremony, which took place June 3.

Selected from 235 submissions from reporters working in print, digital, TV and radio (in eight languages), the winners were chosen by judges with language and cultural fluency who know the challenges of working in the sector.

“Ethnic media has quickly become an increasingly indispensable bridge for communicating with diverse populations within our state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at the opening ceremony.

“You have worked against enormous odds to make sure our communities were informed about historic news events of the year. You are key to sustaining an inclusive communications infrastructure that knits our communities together when so many forces, as you know well, threaten to drive us apart,” the governor added.

The multilingual awards were sponsored by Ethnic Media Services and California Black Media. Each winner received $1,000 in cash. Entries were submitted in nine categories:

The 2020 census,
The COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impact on ethnic communities,
The economic crisis that exacerbated racial and economic fault lines in California, the rights of immigrants,
The movement for racial justice sparked by the murder of George Floyd, exceptional reporting on the impact of climate change, the 2020 elections, commentary that serves as a call to action for ethnic audiences, and community media innovation and resilience to survive the pandemic.

“Thank you to all the journalists, reporters, editors, photographers and publishers who work long hours without recognition every day. You are committed to telling stories and covering underreported stories that we would otherwise never hear,” said Regina Brown Wilson, Executive Director of California Black Media.

In their acceptance speeches, the awardees recognized the support of their editors, publishers and families, as well as the challenges of covering ethnic communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, racist policies, and hate crimes.

“Words can be deadly, or they can be life affirming. While the idle intellectual elite strive to cancel culture, we are tasked with removing the knee out of the throat of truth and reaffirming and defining journalism in our own image,” said Rose Davis of Indian Voices, awarded for her landmark essay: “The Census and the Fourth Estate,” which advocates for the participation of Native Americans in the census despite centuries of being excluded.

Danny Morrison, winner in the category of English language broadcast TV for his analysis of the Black Lives Matter movement in Bakersfield said that “as an African American man in central California, I’ve always known that we have a lot of work to do regarding the inequities within our ethnicity. That is the reason why my team and I went to prisons, schools, churches, youth groups and more to speak to the underserved and the forgotten because we understand the struggle that in most cases we have lived through.”

Jorge Macias, awarded for his digital coverage of climate change for Univision, recalled how in the last four years, “we all suffered from the denial of climate change, and even in moments of terror in California with these devastating fires, the former president (Donald) Trump said that science didn’t know. This prize means a lot because as human beings we have to battle with that absurd view denying climate change.”

Hosts for the evening were Odette Alcazaren-Keeley and Pilar Marrero, both distinguished veterans of the ethnic media industry. Some 20 elected officials, community leaders, scholars and writers paid tribute to the sector in videotaped remarks.

Sandip Roy, once a software engineer in Silicon Valley, now an award-winning author and journalist in India, said if it weren’t for ethnic media giving him a platform, he wouldn’t be a writer today.

After presenting awards to Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese reporters for stories on issues impacting Black and Latinx communities, Alcazaren-Keeley announced a special judge’s award for cross-cultural reporting. The winner, Jeanne Ferris of News from Native California, documented how the destinies of two groups of people converged when Japanese Americans were incarcerated in World War II on reservation lands.

At the closing of the ceremony, Sandy Close, executive director of Ethnic Media Services, said the coming together of reporters from so many racial and ethnic groups to celebrate not just their own but each other’s work was the real takeaway for the night. “Ethnic media are like fingers on a hand,” she said, quoting Chauncey Bailey, a veteran of Black media killed in 2007 for investigating wrongdoing in his own community. “When we work together, we’re a fist.”

Christy Price

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Oakland Post: Week of May 14 – 20, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 14 – 20, 2025

Published

15 hours ago

May 16, 2025

Oakland Post

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Activism

The Best Advice for Raising Children: Discipline That Makes Sense

In his book Developing Positive Self Images and Discipline in Black Children, Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu suggests that primary aims for socializing Black children should be: establishing goals related to God and the church; familiarizing children with religious texts like the Bible or Quran; educating them of Black culture like Khemetic (Egyptian) Civilization; enlightening them about Black leaders like Malcolm X and Sojourner Truth; and teaching them to strive to be employers, not employees.

Published

3 days ago

May 13, 2025

Oakland Post

Headshot of Dr. William A. Thomas. Photo courtesy of Dr. William A. Thomas.

By William A. Thomas, Ph.D.

In many African societies, the primary aim of socialization is to raise children to be socially responsible and eventually provide economic support to their parents and extended families. Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye taught that children are raised to be respectful of the wishes of their parents and extended adult family members.

In his book Developing Positive Self Images and Discipline in Black Children, Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu suggests that primary aims for socializing Black children should be: establishing goals related to God and the church; familiarizing children with religious texts like the Bible or Quran; educating them of Black culture like Khemetic (Egyptian) Civilization; enlightening them about Black leaders like Malcolm X and Sojourner Truth; and teaching them to strive to be employers, not employees.

Effective disciplinary strategies appropriate to a child’s age and development teach them to regulate their behavior; keep them from harm; enhance their cognitive, social, and emotional executive functioning skills; and reinforce the behavioral patterns taught by their parents and caregivers.

Below are some specific guidelines for disciplining children.

Listen to what children are talking about with interest and show them you understand their feelings. Remember, children mirror and learn about their emotional selves by hearing their feelings reflected back to them. Staying on target also means avoiding labels. When children fail to do what is expected, discussing it is helpful rather than saying how stubborn, lazy, dumb, or bad they are. By the same token, more positive labels can be helpful.

Dependability is another essential component of the discipline process. When parents are dependable, their children learn what to expect and are helped to feel secure. When parents are consistent, children learn to trust, that is, predict their parents’ behaviors with certainty. A child thinks, “When I spill something, I will always be asked to wipe it up.” A child thinks, “If I use foul language, I will always be corrected.” A child thinks, “If I take something that doesn’t belong to me, I will always have to give it back.” The ability to predict with certainty leads children to rely on their parents and the village/community in which they live. Children feel safe when they know what to expect.

Conclusions

It takes a village/community to raise the divine gift that is the Black child. Parents look to therapists for guidance concerning a variety of parenting issues, including discipline. Keep in mind that evidence suggests that corporal punishment is both ineffective in the long term and associated with cognitive and mental health disorders. When parents want guidance about the use of spanking, a child therapist can explore parental feelings, help them better define the goals of discipline, and offer specific behavior management strategies. In addition to providing appropriate education to families, the Bay Area Association of Black Psychologists (Bay ABPsi) can refer them to community resources, like parenting groups and classes.

About the Author

Dr. Thomas is a licensed clinical psychologist with a private practice in the SF/Oakland Bay Area and Beaumont. He is a member of Bay ABPsi, a healing resource committed to providing the Post Newspaper readership with monthly discussions about critical issues in Black Mental Health. Readers are welcome to join us at our monthly chapter meetings every 3^rd Saturday via Zoom and contact us at bayareaabpsi@gmail.com.