KQED, a San Francisco Bay-area public media outlet, recently ran a cheery piece on one of their blogs, KQED Pop. That’s a “daily blog that critically examines the social and cultural impact of music, movies, television, advertisements, fashion, the internet and all the other collective experiences that make us laugh, cringe and cry.”
Market Street, San Francisco, in 1900. What did San Francisco ever have that Oakland didn’t?
They overdid the cringe. The piece by Serena Cole, “A San Franciscan’s Guide to Living in Oakland,” particularly the second paragraph, upset a lot of people who might not actually like to cringe.
That paragraph has the sub-headline “Don’t Be Scared.”
The only rule to living here is to find where to go and not to go. The places I am going to take you on a tour through will label me as “bougie” by Oakland standards, but I don’t think there is anything elitist about coming home in one piece. So stay out of East Oakland and West Oakland. That doesn’t sound like it leaves much, but it does. Trust me, my friends have been violently mugged in East Oakland and had the same house robbed three times in West Oakland. But be my guest if you want to go to either for ‘cool points.’
She goes on say that Oakland is “fine,” though “[not] very glamorous or cutting edge.” She recommends some restaurants, coffee shops, bars, a “super-cute cupcake bakery,” parks, and an auto mechanic.
The comments were kind of negative.
I’m sure the editors happily predicted the outbreak of SF-Oakland rivalry (with the odd swipe at Concord). Yay, lots of traffic! They didn’t predict being called classist, racist, and reminiscent of Fox News. Boo, hostile membership-canceling traffic.
Oakland in 1900. San Francisco? Where? Elephants? We don’t see any.
It got worse. The post was criticized as disgraceful, disrespectful, embarrassing, offensive, awful, and mentioning the wrong restaurants. People said they would stop supporting the station because the post was “anathema to the very mission of KQED.”
Many people made the point that those neighborhoods the writer said to stay out of? – have people not only going there, but living there. Not for “cool points.”
As one commenter wrote, “I understand the sentiment after your friends’ experience with crime there, but there are thousands of people who live in these neighborhoods. Should they stay out of those neighborhoods? Does no one in those neighborhoods listen to public radio?”
Another wrote, “…these are the kinds of messages that are constantly thrown at us in our society which makes people of certain racial and ethnic groups (i.e., low-income Black people) feel “less than.” Yes East Oakland is dangerous, however a lot of people live here, including myself. The article conveys that we don’t count; the only people who are important, the only people who need to be protected, are “her” people. We are Other….”
Cuter than these?
It’s not that it’s forbidden to say that Oakland has high-crime neighborhoods. It’s that the author is addressing people like herself and is visibly not concerned with people who live in East and West Oakland, or the possibility that they might read the blog. Or with people who live in San Francisco, yet don’t want to hear about the parts of Oakland she considers safe and decent. (Not every San Franciscan lives in a secure, delightful neighborhood with cute vintage shops.) She doesn’t seem aware that she’s doing this, since the criticism she anticipates is that cool points-seekers will call her bougie. (Oh, noes!)
The editors at KQED Pop quickly saw that something wasn’t working. They hastily put up a note:
This post has generated a lot of passionate feedback, specifically about the way it addresses East and West Oakland. We hear you! It was not our intention to dismiss these communities. We’re working on a longer response. Until then, we would love it if you used the comment thread in this post to tell us what you love about Oakland.
Cringe.
An hour and a half later, they took out the story’s second paragraph, and put up the following apology.
Earlier today, we ran a post about things to do in Oakland that has generated a LOT of feedback. We hear you! When we ran this, we read it as a tongue-in-cheek piece on the state of the Bay Area. We know the writer and knew her intentions. However, on further review, clearly we got this one wrong. We understand why people are offended by this and we are truly sorry that a lot of people felt hurt and slighted.
After reviewing the post and feedback with a senior editor, we have decided to remove the paragraph that was offensive.
We are very grateful for your feedback and will keep it in mind for all future posts.
In response to your requests for a more researched story, we wanted to share a piece KQED News did recently about the realities of gentrification in Oakland…
Cringe, cringe. The perky attempts to redirect – post Oakland luv! we also do actual journalism about Oakland! – are insulting. Oh, it was tongue-in-cheek, aka IT WAS A JOKE, CAN’T YOU TAKE A JOKE? The assurance that they know the writer is strangely irrelevant. The apology for people feeling hurt and slighted implies they shouldn’t feel that way. Though they say they understand why people are offended, they don’t acknowledge why that is. Which leads one to wonder if they do understand.
This did not help as much as they hoped. People still thought it was “douchey, smug, and ugly.”
The editors posted a second apology.
The original post, A San Franciscan’s Guide to Living in Oakland, has been removed. We apologize for publishing the post, which does not reflect the values or mission of KQED. We are grateful for all the comments from our community, which we are preserving here at the URL of the original post. If you wish to view the original post, it has been archived [here], and an earlier apology by the Pop editors has been archived [here].
Still cringing, though not quite as much. They still don’t say what was wrong with the post, and they still don’t take responsibility. But they’ve quit saying it was only a joke from a pal, and oh, sweet relief, they’ve stopped with the creepy perky.
Archiving the story is a curious move. The archived story doesn’t include the offensive second paragraph. (Which can be found at non-KQED sites.) So it doesn’t protect them from charges of suppressing information. From a historian’s point of view, why preserve an incomplete version of the story? But from an offended reader’s point of view, you wouldn’t want to keep the objectionable paragraph up. Then why preserve any of the story?
With the stacked apologies and censored archives, this thing somehow reminds me of “The people responsible for sacking the people responsible have been sacked.”
SorryWatch thanks those observant people Barbara Gersh and Locke Berkebile, who pointed these apologies out to us.
Well, I for one am glad that they archived the original post, with or without the offending paragraph, because that is the only way I could track down the “super cute cupcake bakery” she mentioned. (http://jamesandthegiantcupcake.com/ just fyi.) I love a good cupcake!
As for the rest of the story, it is another case of someone thinking that they are talking only to people like themselves, or worse thinking that there only *are* people like themselves. I’m sure it never occurred to the writer that the people who live in those neighborhoods might read her piece because she didn’t give any thought to them as people in the first place. But as for the apology, it boils down to 2 classic avoidance techniques: 1) we didn’t mean to offend and 2) we’re sorry that people were offended, instead of an actual apology which would be something like “We’re sorry we printed something so offensive.”
Frances, you nailed it. Except for the part about cupcakes. I’m not wild about cake in general.
However, my understanding is that in the UK these are called “fairy cakes.” That helps.
The obvious solution, of course, is to support oakland’s KALW.
Wait! I looked up the author of the original post and now I’m really angry. And this says more about me than anything else. I assumed she was African-American and was speaking from a different perspective. Her use of the word “bougie” was a signifier – to me, being from Brooklyn, that’s a word that’s only used within the Black community, and Whitey Whiterson better NOT try to use it to differentiate different strata of Black society.
Apparently that’s not the case anymore! OR, and I suspect this is more the case, this white writer – who specifically says she’s an artiste, not a writer, so okay, she shouldn’t get any more writing work I hope – purposely uses this word to self-identify as someone who’s DOWN with the MOVEMENT. Hamfisted and awkward!
That being said, I think that the “us” audience she was going for was “frightened San Franciscans,” and for newbies to Oakland, I guess she thought, the easiest entry point would be somewhere like Rockridge or Piedmont.
Whether that’s necessary, desirable, or in the least bit socially acceptable is another matter. I am really boggled that she thought this would be okay. (And that she found it accurate. Apparently she’s lived in Oakland for the past 10 years, but I find that very hard to believe.)
Testing comments in cooperation with Sorrywatch staff.
…huh.
Dang, I missed this whole thing. Turn your back for five minutes…
For what it’s worth, “bougie” is an equal opportunity word, as far as the Californians I know, and I’m AfAm, was born in SF, and went to Mills in Oakland, not that this means anything much,
Also, this seems to me DEFINITELY a case of “Us” talking about “Them” and, Oh, my perky bad, this time, Them was listening, and offended and rightly so. Nobody wants to get hassled or shot, but the fact is, it can happen anywhere, and it’s unfortunate that this person was fine with taking a confidential tone about where best to stay away from “Them” and still be able to take advantage of the super-cute little cupcake shops.
This reminds me of how gentrification happens: ooh, look what we could do with where you are, if only you weren’t here! Now, how can we move you nasty little people along?
::sigh::
As a 20-year resident of an Oakland neighborhood that used to be one that the OP would caution her readers away from but is now becoming quite the hotbed of hipsters, coffee shops, and yoga studios, this whole thing makes me want to cry for what is happening to the whole Bay Area.
Also this is the best companion piece EVER for the OP : http://nikkiandthecity.com/black-neighborhoods-become-white-hilarious/
Best line: “If you don’t know what gentrification is it’s when a bunch of white people move to a fucked-up neighborhood and they open up cupcake shops everywhere.”
That’s a great piece! And now I’m hungry for some antioxidants.