A minor flap is underway over black representation in the White House press corps or, better put, the lack thereof.

This controversy re-ignites one that died down after Bill Clinton’s first term, when there were four black reporters regularly assigned to cover the new presidency. There were two men – one with American Urban Radio, a black network; the other with Associated Press radio news; and two women – Gwen Ifill, then with The New York Times, and yours truly, covering for Gannett News Service. 

Our paltry number served as an indictment of an industry that owes a good portion of its purse and popularity to exposing others’ hypocrisy, discrimination and double standards with no apparent shame or sense of irony about its own.

Covering the president of the United States, like the office itself, is the top of the national political game. And few journalists of color are on the track that leads to the cramped little press room down the hall from the West Wing. They may have been on the job for years, decades even. They may be among the best in the business. They may be acclaimed and awarded journalists. By every account, they may have earned the opportunity.

But, for the most part, we do not get the plum Washington assignments – the White House, the State Department and the Department of Defense foremost among them. I can’t say that there is a deliberate and conscious intent to exclude us. I suspect that, as is the case in so many other arenas of American life, it just doesn’t occur to the powers-that-be to consider one of us.

President Obama’s election shines a whole new light on the situation, of course it does, and several news organizations have responded by putting a little color in their White House reporting teams.  Even so – even in this unprecedented and special time – the White House press corps remains an overwhelmingly white club. It has long been a ridiculous condition, with the steady flow of trained, black journalists and the increasing “browning” of America. You would think a black president would be the final alarm. Not so.

Notably, the so-called “black press” – those stalwarts whose patrons are people of color – has made a commitment to cover the administration of this, the first black president. But, there have been complaints that reporters from those news outlets are getting short shrift. Mainly, they say, they are in the room, but don’t get called on for a question.

This is key. Unless you just want to be able to say you were there or unless you’re doing a story about what it feels like to be in the historic East Room – unless you just came for that – then to not be called on for a question leaves you wondering why you even bothered to show up when, at the very least, C-SPAN and the news-in-a-loop cable shows will run it, and you wouldn’t have to worry about trying to squeeze into one of those little gilded chairs.

Being called on is the real point of attending the news conference. It is also the reason serious news organizations should diversify their reporting squads.

Regardless of what Obama’s election could mean for the future of race relations, the past is a story of parallel worlds. And from those disjointed worlds came different experiences, perspectives, ideas and customs. And, to get a handle on all of it, you had to have been there.

In his first full-fledged news conference in March of 1993, President Clinton called on me after taking several questions from colleagues in the room. 

My question was not .....

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