CNN journalist and author Soledad O’Brien urged students to be their own advocates as they work to find their passion in a lecture in the Ferguson Center Thursday night.
“You have to constantly fight and advocate for what you can do,” O’Brien said. “It’s about constantly challenging people’s expectations of what you can do.”
The lecture, titled “Diversity – On TV, Behind the Scenes & In Our Lives,” touched on O’Brien’s background growing up in an interracial home, her first jobs in journalism and her documentary work of the last several years.
Her mother, a black Cuban, and her father, a white Australian, met in Baltimore, Md., in 1958. At the time, interracial marriage was illegal, so the couple travelled to Washington D.C. to wed.
O’Brien, one of six children, was on the pre-med track at Harvard University before dropping out after realizing her heart wasn’t in medicine.
“To say my parents were disappointed was an understatement,” she said. “Go with your gut when you know what your passion isn’t, though.”
O’Brien took her first job in television, a job she said involved making coffee and taking tacks out of a bulletin board. In one of her first interviews, O’Brien said she was told she wouldn’t get the job because of her skin color.
“He said ‘I’d like to hire you, but I only have one spot for a black person, but you’re not dark enough’,” she said.
O’Brien also recounted a story of her mother, a public school teacher, who saw a young black student surrounded in the hallway by the school principal, vice principal, and dean. O’Brien said her mother noticed the boy looked overwhelmed. Her mother stayed in the hallway with the boy, O’Brien said, even after the principal told her she wasn’t needed.
“She was telegraphing to the kid that ‘I’m here to be a witness for you,’” O’Brien said. “That was power – being the person willing to be a witness and not move on when someone tells you that you should.”
This experience, she said, is what drove her to journalism and still inspires her to tell the stories of the underrepresented.
“My personal goal is to bring to light a wider range of stories,” she said. “We are all in a position to do something. Diverse voices have power.”
Kelly Ritenour, a junior majoring in telecommunication and film, found O’Brien’s success motivating because of her less than glamorous beginnings.
“She inspired me,” Ritenour said. “Her first job was something every college kid could relate to.”
Meaghan Thomas, a senior majoring in telecommunication and film, said O’Brien’s advice for college students rung true because the journalist has lived it herself.
“She never took no for an answer and shot for the stars,” Thomas said.
O’Brien has spearheaded the series “In America,” which has produced the documentaries “Black in America,” “Education in America,” “Latino in America,” and “Muslim in America.” It was announced last week that she will return to CNN to host a conversational news show.
Whatever the format, O’Brien said she hopes to continue to fight to be a diverse voice.
“How do we tell stories about human beings we are engaged by? We start doing them because it matters,” she said. “I believe the time is now and the opportunity is now to use your voice.”
