FARAI CHIDEYA, host:
I'm Farai Chideya, and this is NEWS & NOTES.
If you're a black woman in America, what's the biggest thing on your mind right now? Well, maybe it's your family, your job, your financial future. One major TV network wants to get in your head. All this week, "NBC Nightly News" will look at some important issues shaping the lives of black American women. The series is called "African-American Women: Where they Stand," and the topics range from health to education to relationships.
(Soundbite of "NBC Nightly News" series, "African-American Women: Where They Stand")
Ms. MARA SCHIAVOCAMPO (Digital correspondent, NBC Nightly News)": Anytime you get together with a bunch of single, black, professional women, the conversation will eventually lead to, you know, what are we going to do? What are we going to do about the no-husband situation? And, you know, and then it ends up, you know, are we going to have to go there? Meaning, are we going to have to go outside of our race to, you know, to do this marriage thing or this relationship thing?
CHIDEYA: For more, I've got Mara Schiavocampo. She's a digital correspondent for "NBC Nightly News." Also, Rehema Ellis, a correspondent for NBC News. Both have worked very closely on the series.
Thanks for coming on.
Ms. REHEMA ELLIS (Correspondent, NBC News): For sure.
Ms. SCHIAVOCAMPO: Thanks for having us.
CHIDEYA: So, Rehema, how did this come about that your network decided to dig into the lives of the sisters?
Ms. ELLIS: Well, we have to give credit where credit is due. Mark Whitaker who is a senior vice president over at NBC News, he came one day and said, in having conversations with a variety of people, they came to conclude that of he major achievements in the African-American community in reference to academics and in the workplace and economically, that they looked around and it seems as though those achievements are achievements of the African-American women and not men. And he thought there's something there we need to talk more about this and what are the consequences of that.
CHIDEYA: Now, Mara, you are an award-winning digital journalist and, you joined the NBC network not too long ago. What role are you playing in the series and what doe sit even mean to be a digital journalist?
Ms. SCHIAVOCAMPO: It's a good question which I get asked pretty often. I work with all digital equipment, digital cameras, digital editing equipment, and I work alone. So I'm kind of a new breed in that traditionally television journalist work with the crew. And I don't. I work alone to shoot and write, produce report, edit my work. So kind of the way a radio reporter would go out into the field and collect their story. I do the same thing.
CHIDEYA: What's been your favorite part so far of working on this?
Ms. SCHIAVOCAMPO: On working on this series?
CHIDEYA: Mm-hmm.
Ms. SCHIAVOCAMPO: Well, it's the inter-racial relationships piece which is one of the ones that I'm doing for the Web site, Nightly.msnbc.com. It's one that's close to my heart because my mother is a black woman married to a white man. They've been married for 35 years. I'm the product of an interracial marriage. And so it was really interesting for me to dig into it and to see what's happening today. I've heard stories from my parents about what was happening when they got together, but what's the trend today?
CHIDEYA: Very controversial. Rehema, we had- we've had a lot of discussions on our show NEWS & NOTES about interracial relationships. But it sounds like it's just one of the many controversies that you guys aren't afraid to tackle. In fact, you've got something on education which also includes the stats about black women going to college versus black men going to college. Tell us a little bit about that.
Ms. ELLIS: The statistics really are dramatic. When you look at the numbers of African-American undergraduates, nearly two-thirds are women. In some colleges around this country and classrooms, African-American women outnumber African-American men by seven to one.
And so when you start to look at what's going to happen in the future, if you don't have African-American males who are in college and/or graduating from college, but you have women who are, when they look to see who is going to be their partner? Is it going to be someone who has achieved the same level of academic and economic success that they have achieved, they look around, and the numbers are dwindling, the numbers of men on the same level.
So women are now at the position where they're asking themselves what am I going to do? Am I going to be single? Am I going to Paris alone? Am I going to look to another race in order to have a partner? We have some elements in our story when we talk about relationships, a one woman mentions how friends said to her, well, why are you getting a dog? And she said, well, I want to have something that's going to be happy to see me when I come home. And the whole point is, of that success is only limited if there's no one to share it with.
And so African-American women are at a crossroads it seems in terms of determining what are they going to do. They've done all the right things. They've gotten the message from their mothers and fathers that said you have to be educated. You have to be able to take care of yourselves. Women got that. And they have gone ahead and achieved. But for some reason, African-American men haven't stepped up at the same level. And many of the women that I've talked to, in fact, almost all of them said, that this, their force, this success is very limited. They feel that they're never going to have the kind of success that they want unless African-American men are standing alongside them.
CHIDEYA: Now, Mara, do you think that this is actually going to raise a lot of controversy either within the African-American community or in the larger community because it does bring up these stark issues of gender and economic equality, social issues. I mean, do you think that this is going to make some waves?
Ms. SCHIAVOCAMPO: Well, yeah, I do. Because it's a very fine line to walk, and to tell the story, and to tell it accurately and fairly and to not make it into the black man-bashing story and that was something that I was very conscious when I was working on this piece. I'd spent over an hour on the phone with my producer going over the script, which is something we don't normally do because we were very conscious about the fact that we did not want to make this piece about how bad black men are, because that's a whole piece in and of itself is to what their struggles are, into what their circumstances are, into why they're not achieving at the same level as black women. And that's - that wasn't the piece we were doing. We were doing a piece about black women.
And so we were trying very hard to focus in on black women and to not make it into where black men falling short. But inevitably, you have to, when you're talking about women who can't find mates at their level, you have to say why? It's because they are not - you're having black women who are outpacing black men in - at the professional level, in terms of education, and things like that. And so, inevitably, by comparison, that's going to come up. And surely, there will be people who will say, you know, we don't appreciate that representation, but we did everything we could to be fair and accurate in doing this story.
CHIDEYA: Now, Rehema, there are not a lot of sisters at your level in the world of media. Do you think that by doing this, you're actually, also helping to inform people at NBC as well as people in the media and then the people who are also going to watch?
Ms. ELLIS: I sure hope so. These are discussions, though, that we've been having at NBC, about numbers of African-Americans - and not just women, but African-Americans in general, who work in this business of news. And if you look around, I mean, it's something that everybody can see. You turn on your television today and tomorrow and, just look at who's there, who's presenting the news, who's delivering the news. And it becomes pretty clear what's happening.
So, yes, our hope is that this will say even to those of at NBC, where we work, that something is happening and that we need to pay attention to it, because as we say in the story, this isn't just an African-American story.
Angela Burt-Murray, who is the editor-in-chief of Essence magazine, she talks about how this really is an American story. Because what's happening in the African-American community, we are starting to see shades of that happening in a larger society. So there's a reason for everybody to pay attention.
CHIDEYA: Well, Rehema, Mara, thank you so much.
Ms. ELLIS: Thank you.
CHIDEYA: Rehema Ellis is a correspondent for NBC News. We've also been talking with Mara Schiavocampo, a digital correspondent for "NBC Nightly News." Both were at our New York studios and NBC's five-part series on African-American women starts tonight with a look at education. You can find out more about the series at our Web site, nprmewsandnotes.org.
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