The Milloy Visits A&T

Who is Courtland Milloy? Most would say he’s a very opinionated columnist for the Washington Post, which he is. Another portion of readers would say that he’s an extremist who says what he wants with no holds barred, while others just simply suggest that he may be racist.

Reading his weekly column, one might assume that he may very well be a racist, among other things, however it’s a different experience to have a face-to-face talk and realize that he’s more. On Wednesday, Sept. 22, Milloy was the look of journalism through the black experience. At noon in a journalism classroom on North Carolina A&T campus, he was open to speak his mind and he opened the eyes of student journalists about politics and how there is a very small percentage of African Americans in the journalism industry.

“This is not for the weak.” he said in all seriousness. Even on the outside looking in, one feels that Milloy is talking about the war and what to expect on the front lines.

There are links to blogs attached to his articles from commenters and fellow bloggers, one in particular from a unknown reader of yahoo.com. He was criticizing the columnist, claiming that his opinion was very contradictive and even went as far as to question the newspaper and its creditability. Other comments followed brushed Milloy off as some dumb racist. Incorrect. Milloy is used to the criticism. He considers himself as a ‘Race Man’ of whom him/her has a fire in their stomach that they have to prove themselves constantly or else failure is eminent. Its these group of individuals that keep us aware of the fact that for Black people to come this far we are still being under represented in the media and in the journalism industry, he said.

Amusing and down to earth, Milloy spoke of his past experiences and made occasional jokes wrapped in truth. He challenged the students with questions such as “How are you going to say that you want to be a screenwriter but you don’t read screen plays? How can you say you want to be a news reporter but you don’t watch the news?”

Courtland Milloy’s column can be read every Sunday in the Washington Post in the local opinions section of the paper. As of present day Milloy resides in the Washington DC area.