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TransactionalPR

~ Community-Identity-Communication

TransactionalPR

Category Archives: Women’s Words

Sybrina Fulton and Trayvon Martin: About Raising Children On the Cusp of Fear and Hope

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by metagcarstarphen in Observances, Women's Words

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

African American families, grieving mothers, Mother's Day, Sybrina Fulton, the talk, Trayvon Martin

The first time I got an inkling that Mother’s Day could be something other than joyful was when I watched my mother grieve the loss of her own mom,  my grandmother Patsy.  I remember how we were in the wood-paneled basement of our three-story Philadelphia home when she got the call.  I can still her cradling the beige telephone handset on her chest with closed eyes after the sad news came from Louisiana.  Decades later, I struggled with my own grief (and still do) when Mother’s Day rolls around.  Although I was in the room with my mom and held her hand as she breathed her last, I have to fight to turn my thoughts from grief and longing, to gratitude and joyful memory for having had her in my life.

So, I think of these things today as I write this tribute in honor of Sybrina Fulton whose video message to all mothers is something everyone should view.  If this name is familiar, it should be.  Sybrina Fulton is the poised, but grieving mother of slain teenage Trayvon Martin, whose tragic death in Florida has sparked news coverage nationally and beyond.  Today, on her Twitter account, Sybrina sent a post that begins:

“As I send you this message, my heart hurts and my eyes are full of tears for my beloved son Trayvon.”

There is no way that anyone can attempt to interpret her grief and I certainly won’t try to here.  I do know that today is only one of the many bumps in the road she will face on the road to closure and peace about her son’s loss.  She has courageously transferred her grief into action, with the formation of the Justice for Trayvon Martin Foundation designed to address what she believes were underlying issues contributing to her son’s untimely death.  The second-degree murder trial of her son’s self-confessed killer, George Zimmerman is likely not to occur until October 2013 or later, prolonging her anxiety.  Still, Sybrina must be heartened by the generous donations of leave time by her co-workers in the Miami-Dade County, where she has worked for 23 years.  Their gifts will allow her to take eight months off and retain a salary while she waits, watches and prays.

Raising a child in any day and age is a challenge.  As parents, we want to protect our children from harm and yet propel them to navigate their own way through a future we cannot know.  African American mothers often struggle with raising their children through a contradictory message of fear and hope.  Our children, like all children, must know how to walk boldly in this world in order to claim all that it has to offer.  Yet as parents and elders we know that there are unseen terrors, unspoken threats and invisible enemies lurking.  How do we voice these without shutting down our children’s desire to go confidently into their unseen futures?

I call this mindset constructive paranoia.  To explain it, consider the definition of paranoia.  It is when you think people are out to get you.  But…. what if there are some people who really are out to get you?  Then, you learn to be guarded around people who might be threats in broad ways in order to be protected against the narrow chances when that caution might be justified.  In the wake of Tayvon Martin’s murder, some commentators have referred to this as “the talk” and explicated how some of the elements of this bittersweet conversation between parents and their children.

Look around.  If you can, observe children from different ethnic backgrounds in the presence of their parents, and watch the African American kids.  Do they seem more restrained on the playground?  Are they less vocal in public gatherings? Are they far less likely to, for instance, wander up and down the aisles of a supermarket unattended without some adult sternly pulling them back into view?  Or, when some children boldly verbally challenge adults, or break into the front of a line without apology, watch whose parents are nonchalant and whose are agitated.  Because one child’s “cute” behavior is another child’s accidental slip into danger.

Sybrina Fulton’s grief is no doubt compounded by this familiar dilemma.  She tried to raise her son for freedom, describing him as a typical teen in many a media account.  Trayvon got to play video games, travel to New York City, and imagine a career in aviation. And yet he died after being shot on a visit to his father just yards away from the townhome where he slept.  Does she wonder, in the irrational way that grieving hearts can do, if there was something else she could have warned her son about that could have saved his life.

Raising children on the cusp of fear and hope is an all too-familiar place for many parents with African American children.  It is a space created by the social condition of racial stereotyping and distrust, and it is something we all must battle.  Because when a Trayvon Martin dies, and a George Zimmerman kills him, we all lose, and the hearts of two mothers break in unfixable ways.

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Soledad O’Brien: A Destiny for Diversity

22 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by metagcarstarphen in Influencers, Women's Words

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Tags

cross-cultural, Diversity, PRSA, race stories, scholarships for girls, Soledad O'Brien

I recently returned from the 2011 conference for the Public Relations Society of America, which was held in Orlando, Fl.  The allure of all things Disney was potent, but I found myself absolutely entranced by the meetings, conversations and networking at this powerhouse conference.  Over 3,000 people aligned with the public relations profession—as practitioners, educators or college students—attended this meeting and the energy was palpable.

As is the custom at such meetings, there was a dizzying selection of workshops and special presentations, and I attended as many as I could squeeze into the two-and-a-half days I was there.  For me, though, one of the highlights was the keynote presentation by CNN reporter, Soledad O’Brien.

Soledad gave a very impassioned call for communicators to enliven the facts of a story with more narrative  storytelling approaches, and implored the PRSA audience to embrace the conference theme of  “imagine, create and inspire.”

But, there was more to her story, as she elegantly wove her personal story into the narrative of her speech.  Soledad recounted her family heritage as the daughter of a Cuban mother and an Irish father, recounting some stories about how here parents came to form their bond.  As she told it, her father approached her mother repeatedly for a date, and was routinely turned down by this proper, Catholic young woman.  When she finally relented, they attempted to go out to restaurants that routinely refused to serve them.  Estella ended up inviting Edward for a home-cooked meal, and the romance blossomed from there.  When this couple decided to marry, interracial unions were still illegal in some states, including they one in which they lived.  So they traveled to Washington, D.C. where such marriages were legal, but returned home to resume a life that was for a long time afterwards, was not legally recognized.

History tells us that interracial marriages became universally legal in the United States with the Supreme Court decision in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case – settled the year after Soledad was born.  Sharing her family story smartly allowed Soledad to teach by example.  She could have railed against the injustices of an unfair law.  Instead, she told us stories that in their uniqueness reminded us simultaneously of their connections to us all, through the shared human experiences of love, commitment, and triumphs over adversity.

One can see the influence of Soledad’s personal story over her current work with the In America series.  These documentaries explore underrepresented communities through the prism of race and other differences.  What Soledad illustrates through her work so brilliantly is how communicators can intelligently tell stories that report on racial identity as a part of what animates people’s lives, decisions and social standing in the United States.  This is the future of diversity: complex, compelling, and integral to how we communicate about, and to, each other.

This is the theme of transactional public relations and this blog—that there are relevant stories all around us where we negotiate identity along racial lines.  Our challenge is to recognize these stories, to share them, and to empower our communication with these narratives.  We discuss a lot about the need for “relationship-building” and “dialogue,” but without a protocol for accounting for race, our exchanges can be, at times, counter-productive.  I’ll say more about this later.

Something Soledad did not mention—and in front of an audience of potential publicists—was her newly formed foundation to provide scholarships for girls between the ages of 15 to 21.  A project that she and her husband initiated, this effort is raising funds and hopes to solicit applications from girls in 2012, according to an Essence Magazine article.  Making opportunities for young women striving to find their identities through education sounds like a grand project, indeed.

What is your story?  What opportunities exist out there for more transactional communication?

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Dr. Meta G. Carstarphen

Professor
Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication
405.310.9081
mcarstarphen@ou.edu
**Check out my personal blog about learning, life, and engagement at http://metaprof7.wordpress.com

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