Black and Write

The Urban Spectrum, Denver’s black newspaper, is no stranger to writing articles about racism and discrimination. But it now finds itself in new territory: A white male has sued the paper for failing to hire him as an editor.

Jim Emery filed suit last May in U.S. District Court, claiming that in April and August 1996, he was overlooked for editor positions at the paper in favor of less qualified black candidates simply because he is white.

The Urban Spectrum, which had a white editor-in-chief earlier in the decade, claims that Emery, who has worked for the paper since 1993, never formally applied to the paper’s owner, Rosalind J. “Bee” Harris, for the jobs.

“I don’t quite see how he can make this claim of discrimination for failure to be selected to positions he never applied to,” says state representative Penfield Tate III, the newspaper’s attorney. “With regard to April ’96, no one applied, because the owner of the paper gave someone the opportunity to serve as editor.” And in August ’96? Tate says many people applied for the advertised jobs of editor and copy editor but that Emery wasn’t one of them.

Emery says he inquired about being editor both times. In August, he says, Harris told him the color of his skin would probably keep him from the job. “She told me, ‘I think I would have a problem with you as a white editor going out into the community,'” he recalls.

In a September 1996 phone conversation between Harris and Emery that Emery recorded and let Westword listen to, he reiterated an earlier conversation in which Harris told him he wasn’t promoted because he was white, and she responded by saying, “Right.”

Tate says he has heard a tape of a conversation between Emery and Harris but won’t confirm whether he’s heard this particular exchange. Asked whether Harris discriminated against Emery, he replies, “It’ll speak for itself if it’s admitted in court.”

Emery claims he’s worked as a freelance journalist all over the world and came to the Urban Spectrum as a freelance writer in 1993 while pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology.

He wasn’t the only white person working for the Spectrum, and he liked the inclusive and open atmosphere. “The Spectrum was great,” he says. “I really liked it. It was the urban newspaper. You could cover stuff the dailies didn’t do.”

He says he wrote at least twenty stories in his time there, which he claims is more than any of the other people considered for the editing jobs. But everything went downhill at the start of 1996, he says, when the paper hired Helen Littlejohn as editor. “When Littlejohn came on in January 1996, the Urban Spectrum changed,” says Emery. “It became a very racist, Klan-like place. It was racist in the slant of articles.” There was, he says, a lot of “get Whitey” rhetoric. (Littlejohn, who is black, declined to comment for this story.)

Emery says at one time the paper was preparing a story about relationships and he suggested a gay person be interviewed. Littlejohn “wanted to know what color” the gay person was, he claims. The potential gay source was white, as it turned out, and Emery says Littlejohn dismissed the idea by saying, “I guess we don’t have anyone.” “I felt that was discriminatory,” says Emery.

Other than that, he says, he can’t recall specific incidents of racial harassment. “Most of it was about white people in general,” he says.

Emery says he confronted Harris about the “months of blatant prejudice.” But Tate denies that the paper is racist. “Over the years,” he says, “the Urban Spectrum has had people of varying nationalities and ethnicities providing services.”

In fact, Jo Kadlecek, a white woman, served as editor-in-chief for a full year in 1992. “I felt it was really an honor that they would even have considered me,” says Kadlecek, who now lives in New York City. “They didn’t have to hire this crazy white girl.”

She says the experience was a positive one, and apart from a few “puzzled faces” at the editor with the long blond hair, “I don’t remember getting any negative stuff.” Kadlecek adds that white men have previously served in editing jobs there.

Tate adds that, according to Emery’s own deposition, he “never served as an editor in his career,” with the exception of rewriting some of his own articles.

Emery, however, says he has done editing work, including editing a book for a friend and editing ad copy and television scripts. And he still contends that his race was a handicap at the paper. In April 1996, he says, he approached Harris about becoming editor, and she promised to look into it. But Thabiti Ngozi, a writer with less seniority at the Spectrum, got the nod. Emery claims that Harris later told him Ngozi was promoted because he is black.

Emery says his frustration boiled over later in 1996, when he says Harris made clear to him that his race would prevent him from being the paper’s editor. Still, he thought he would be kept on as copy editor, a job he had performed for the September ’96 issue. But the jobs of editor and copy editor were both advertised formally in the paper. Those ads asked applicants for resumes and cover letters and described an interview process. This broke from the paper’s more informal, in-house method of selecting editors. Emery says he was miffed that Harris didn’t ask him to apply–and admits that he never did submit a formal application.

A trial in the Emery lawsuit is set for June 7, 1999.