Soledad O’Brien Is Betting on Jeff ZuckerPosted in Articles, Biography, Interviews, Media Archive, United States on 2012-12-18 19:08Z by Steven |
Soledad O’Brien Is Betting on Jeff Zucker
The New York Times Magazine
2012-12-18
Andrew Goldman
Your memoir made your experience growing up in Smithtown, a largely white town on Long Island, sound like a huge drag.
It really wasn’t. It is truly not fun to be the family that sticks out in an all-white community. On the other side, I have five brothers and sisters, we all look exactly the same and we’re very, very tight. The lessons about race were not pleasant, but there are things that I loved about my childhood. In the book, I didn’t want to be the tragic mulatto.
Is “tragic mulatto” a term I should know?
Oh, yeah. Google it. At Harvard I was taking an African-American studies class, and we were reading about the tragic mulatto. Invariably the tragic mulatto can’t fit in either world and flings herself off a bridge. So I’m reading, and I’m like, Oh, my God, I think I’m in literature, but my life was never like that.
Before this, I didn’t know you had a white Australian dad and a black Cuban mom. Would you prefer to have people not think about your race at all?
It never made a difference to me if people watching knew, but I want people to understand I’m very proud of what I am. My parents have a great story. And I think your background is critical in how you approach the stories that you’re covering…
Read the entire interview here.