Heretic Pride

I turned in my first piece today, and she sort of hated it (mostly organizational problems, which I understand) and there were three sentences she actually just deleted. As some background, I interviewed a woman who is going to be giving a lecture on home and garden design involving mid-century housing. Some of the houses she’s going to be talking about are Eichler homes. Joseph Eichler, a 1950s real estate developer, believed that strong design elements shouldn’t only be made available to those with the largest income. He borrowed a lot from Frank Lloyd Wright but was a strong proponent of non-discriminatory housing. In the 1950s this was pretty rare. 

So, I write my article and my editor takes out three sentences. One is about the woman having a husband and three children (okay, fine). Another is about Frank Lloyd Wright (okay, cool, I was losing focus). The last is about Joseph Eichler believing that housing should be made available to all nationalities. She then tells me “This is a gardening piece, not a public issues piece, I don’t want to hear about Eichler and equality.” 

More like “I’M REALLY, REALLY RACIST. Racist enough to actually OMIT the STRONGEST part of Eichler’s philosophy. ACTUALLY HIS ENTIRE PHILOSOPHY. THAT’S HOW RACIST I AM.” 

I know it may not seem that bad, but seriously, omitting the principle tenet of Eichler’s approach to housing in a piece that concerns Eichler homes is the most blatant obstruction of information I have encountered in a personal basis. Obviously I haven’t encountered many, but this is fucking awful. 

My editor is, if not racist, still a bigot.