Disclaimer: The opinions reflected in this article are the author’s and do not represent the entirety of Black Ink’s staff.
By: Mistyre Bonds (’19), Staff Writer
image credit: Sophia Chizhikova/The Daily Tar Heel
Soledad O’Brien was the perfect speaker for Martin Luther King Day, that is…if the holiday were named after her.
On January 19, the Memorial Hall auditorium was filled with anticipation for a powerful multimedia presentation given by an accomplished broadcast journalist. A member of CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television,” and a woman who has reported on CNN’s Black in America, O’Brien was more than qualified to be the speaker at the culmination of UNC’s Weeklong MLK Celebration. The premise of O’Brien’s speech was simple: Everyone has the ability to use their talents in order to push the social justice agenda. She was prepared to show three clips: Latino in America, Black in America, and Beyond Bravery: Women of 9/11, already exceeding expectations.
She started off well enough: bashing the way that Martin Luther King Jr. is portrayed in present day media and citing the original name of the ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, “Normalcy No More.” An outstanding observation, the comments almost immediately fell flat as she clumsily transitioned into a narrative about… herself.
“My responsibility is to give context into people’s stories…and dig deep.”
Her lecture was flux with quotes like this one, which while well-deserved and applicable to her work, were just a bit out of place in an arena where she was called to speak under the name of a great black leader, to a predominantly black audience. Further, her decision to skip “Black in America”, a documentary cataloguing the 40 years after King’s assassination, yet show clips from “Latino in America” and “Beyond Bravery: Women of 9/11, two topics that can be applied to herself, also seemed quite odd. She did try to tie the King in though, using his legacy to elevate herself and peppering in his quotes order to make her monologue relevant.
It was not all bad however, the message of her lecture was honorable: to listen to others, and work hard to combat stereotypes, though she gave little concrete advice into how to do so. Slowly winding down her hour long talk, she quickly referenced the Reverend and said,
“I will always support those who are trying to make an inclusive world a better place for everybody. So I ask you…what are you going to do?”
What will I do? As O’Brien rounded off her self-serving speech I walked out of the auditorium, struggling to remember the significance of the lecture.
