The Daily Tar Heel: A Terror to Black UNC
For years, Black people have been speaking out about the anti-Blackness of the DTH, and for years we have been ignored.
The Daily Tar Heel, founded in 1983, is an independent student newspaper at UNC. The newspaper has covered a variety of topics ranging from sports, local news, and campus happenings. Throughout the years, they’ve received substantial praise for their efforts to discuss social justice topics and put pressure on the University for its bigotry. However, Black students and community members have also, for decades been vocal about the vicious and pervasive onslaught of anti-Blackness the Daily Tar Heel has inflicted upon the Black community at UNC, especially Black organizers and journalists. How can the DTH feign the position of confronting the University about their anti-Blackness, when they actively downplay their own?
On August 9th of 2020, The Daily Tar Heel released an article entitled “We’re Sorry.” Within this article, alongside a smiling picture of their editor in chief, they announced they “have done so many things wrong.” However, they failed to even adequately name what they claim to be apologizing for. They only specifically named two incidents: one instance of harm caused to the East Asian community, and one instance of erasure to the Black community. The piece was awfully dismissive of the depth of their anti-Blackness and how they have continuously inflicted such anti-Blackness onto Black people even still today after this “apology” was published. We are coming forward to confront this and to help amplify the voices of Black people this publication has severely damaged. The Daily Tar Heel beats around the bush. Black Congress does not.
Since the day Black Congress was founded, the relationship between the Daily Tar Heel and Black Congress has been a parasitic one. The nature of this anti-Black world forces, Black people to bear through non Black people consuming and expanding our pain, making spectacle of that pain, intruding on our safe spaces, platforming racists while silencing us, speaking for us, and more. This is exactly what the Daily Tar Heel inflicts upon not only Black Congress, but also the larger Black community. This parasitic relationship has continued even now after their pathetic “We’re Sorry” article.
At each protest we have Daily Tar Heel reporters shove microphones into our faces, prioritizing their quick assignments over our right to recovery, comfortability, and privacy after protests which are always traumatizing and during peaks of Black trauma and grief. This is a common practice among journalists and the entire field needs to seriously interrogate and deconstruct the way they engage Black organizers. DTH writers have even manipulatively leveraged their large platform and quickly churning release of articles to pressure us into interviews, feeding off the fear Black organizers have of our politic being misrepresented or our message not being communicated.
The publication has continuously misrepresented our politic and goals, misquoting us, and diluting our mission. They have engaged us as if they are entitled to our voices and time and as if they are doing us a favor by covering our topics. The publication also co-opts conversations and initiatives already started by the Black community. While the DTH feigns an understanding of the fault in this, they still embrace the applause directed to them and continue the behavior year after year.
Quote taken from conversation with Black UNC student organizer:
“As a student activist on campus, the Daily Tar Heel has always been a dark, looming cloud. We refer to them as vultures because they're always waiting in the shadows ready to pounce on grieving, hurting Black people for the sake of an article. This past year was extremely triggering and exhausting for Black people. There was a moment where I woke up each day for two weeks in a row to a new headline of a Black person being slaughtered in a white supremacist murder. I could barely eat, had nightmares each night, and was hardly getting by as I organized a protest the community needed. Daily Tar Heel writers reached out for an interview and were very inappropriate in how they aggressively engaged me and disrespected my boundaries and right as a Black person to mourn and have space. They even leveraged their large audience and the fact that the piece about us was going out regardless of if we gave our input or not in order to pressure us into speaking to them. I was so disgusted and will never forget that moment.”
In July of 2019, the Daily Tar Heel released an article entitled, “Rise and Fall: the 100 year history of UNC's Confederate monument, Silent Sam” by Preston Lennon. The publication provided a platform for white supremacists and allowed for their vicious anti-Blackness to be broadcasted to an even larger audience. This Daily Tar Heel writer complimented the gun that white supremacist, Lance Spivey brought to campus after publicly proclaiming he was “ready to kill” UNC students. This DTH writer also was gracious to members of the Heirs of the Confederacy who’ve repeatedly referred to Black students activists in violent slurs, and threatened our lives. These same white supremacists urinated and damaged the Unsung Founders Memorial, a fixture which honors the enslaved Black people who were forced to build the campus of UNC.
While the Daily Tar Heel sought out white supremacists voices, community members had to fight to get the statement of a prominent Black organizer into the piece after the story was even published. So much for the “trying to get both sides'' argument. Following the community expressing their deep concerns, the publication updated the story to provide more context about who they decided to platform. However, this was to no avail, the damage was still done, the community still saw where the publication’s values lie, and they still platformed white supremacists while ignoring the voices of Black students and organizers.
Black grief, ever present and consistently added upon by groups like the DTH, deserves reverence. There have been multiple instances where the DTH has treated Black death as unimportant and only deserving of acknowledgement when their publication papers have something to gain. In 2019, the DTH disrespected the grief felt by the Black UNC community after the tragic passing of a fellow Black student. Immediately after finding out about his passing, Daily Tar Heel reporters began harassing Black students who were close to him for statements about his passing for their newspaper. Beyond the blatant disregard for lost Black life, these reporters dehumanized Black students in this moment as nothing more than a tool for creating a tagline for their writing assignment. Instead of learning how to ethically report on Black loss, the DTH has decided to answer for their harm by not reporting on Black loss at all. Two Black professors have been lost within the past year at Carolina, and yet it's been dismissed and ignored as if it's not something that a large portion of UNC’s community has been suffering with.
The Daily Tar Heel’s anti-Blackness has also extended beyond the Carolina community into neighboring cities as well. Durham, NC is a neighboring town known for its large Black population in comparison to many other NC towns. The way the DTH has written about Durham over the years has been riddled with anti-Blackness. They’ve sloppily characterized Durham as a crime ridden city that's spilling over into and contaminating cookie cutter Chapel Hill. There was no acknowledgement for the conditions of anti-Blackness that create such conditions in Durham and the article was heavily sensationalized. Showing no accountability for the anti-Black, fear mongering framing of this piece, the article is still up to this day.
It was not until the year of 2020, that the DTH implemented its very first diversity audit. One of their affiliates tweeted that this audit should've happened a long time ago but they hope it's one of the first steps towards a better future. We aren't sure how that can be true when in the meantime they have been mistreating Black journalists and so many Black people's lives have been damaged and marked forever by their anti black violence. While these slow, disingenuous “first steps” are applauded by the DTH and their supporters, we wonder how many more Black people have to be harmed in this fake journey? Additionally, the newspaper is failing to even think critically about diversity beyond surface level public appeasement ploys. Even the few Black journalists they have are treated horribly by the publication. They need to drastically interrogate and deconstruct their anti-Blackness towards their own Black journalists and associates before subjecting more Black people to this harmful environment just so they can meet sloppy diversity goals.
Quote taken from conversation with previous Black DTH writer:
“The Daily Tar Heel provides opportunities for student journalists at every level and as a late comer to journalism and media, I was more than ecstatic to begin working there- but that excitement was short lived. My shift every week was characterized by being subjected to often being the only Black person, or even the only person of color in the office. I was once told that the paper did not have a “voice” and that the DTH strived to report the news by “objectively” stating the facts. Objectivity is great when recounting perhaps a traffic incident, but when I was told I could not outright denounce Jim Crow in the copy for a post on the paper’s social media accounts, I knew then that “objectivity” in the face of morality would always be complicit in the perpetuation of oppression. Now as a graduate, to look now and see cover stories, headlines and features that use words such as “clusterfuck” to outright denounce the University’s handling of the fall semester, I cannot but think that “objectivity” is actually quite subjective.”
Quote taken from conversation with previous Black DTH writer:
“Working at the DTH was one of the toughest of my journalism experiences at Carolina. Not only were the hours long, but the cold, non diverse environment was absolutely no help. Being one of the only Black people on the staff at the time was a draining experience and not one I would wish on any of my Black friends in the J-school. The DTH needs to do a better job incorporating diversity and non performative change into their newsroom.”
For years, Black people have been speaking out about the anti-Blackness of the DTH, and for years we have been ignored. You cannot say you stand with Black people and the movement for our lives and then praise anti-Black newspapers like the DTH who evade accountability, are deceptive to the community by downplaying their harm, and put on the facade of caring for Black people for the public while harming us in private.
The terror they’ve continued to unleash onto Black people within and outside of the UNC community is so deeply damaging that it is irredeemable. The anti-Blackness of the Daily Tar Heel, their continuous invasion into Black spaces, consumption of Black pain, expansion of Black pain, aggression towards Black organizers and journalists, manipulation of Black organizers, censorship of Black writers, dishonesty to the public, platforming white supremacists, and more cannot continue on. We expect them to do what they usually do, release an article or statement where they posture an acknowledgement of the damage of their actions, while continuing the anti-Blackness they’ve truly been committed to for years. This will never be enough.
Any support towards the Daily Tar Heel should funnel specifically to their Black journalists and newspaper members who are true leaders in the world of journalism and truth telling. We also encourage everyone to further support Black newspaper publications specifically as they actually stand for integrity, honesty to the community, and a world free from white supremacy.