How better reporting can change the way people think about race, crime, and communities [centerforhealthjournalism.org]

By Mary Lou Fulton, Center for Health Journalism, July 17, 2020

I was driving back to Los Angeles from my Arizona hometown when I heard an NPR story about a political rally with a familiar refrain. If only we could go back to the good old days, America’s problems would be solved.

For years, the “make America great again” theme was repeated in news stories without much of a challenge. What good old days are we talking about? The days when Black people could be killed by police with impunity? The days when unmarried women didn’t have a right to obtain birth control? Or when my mom, a Mexican immigrant and an award-winning teacher, was forced to take remedial English classes because an administrator thought her accent was too pronounced?  

So I decided to take on the assumptions embedded in that political tagline. I wrote a song called “Not Going Back.” It is call-and-response about how the appeal to nostalgia masquerades as a political strategy for rolling back hard-fought civil rights victories and preserving white supremacy.

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