Don Lemon anchors CNN Newsroom during weekend prime-time and serves as a correspondent across CNN/U.S. programming. Based in the network’s New York bureau, Lemon joined CNN in September 2006.
A news veteran of Chicago, Lemon reported from Chicago in the days leading up to the 2008 presidential election, including an interview with then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel on the day he accepted the position of Chief of Staff for President-elect Barack Obama. He also interviewed Anne Cooper, the 106-year old voter President-elect Obama highlighted in his election night acceptance speech after he had seen Lemon’s interview with Cooper on CNN.
Lemon has reported and anchored on-the-scene for CNN from many breaking news stories, including the George Zimmerman trial (2013), the Boston marathon bombing (2013), the Philadelphia building collapse (2013), the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (2012), the Colorado Theater Shooting (2012), the death of Whitney Houston, the Inaugural of the 44th President in Washington, D.C., the death of Michael Jackson (2009), Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana (2008) and the Minneapolis bridge collapse (2007).
Lemon has also anchored the network's breaking news coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Arab Spring, the death of Osama Bin Laden and Joplin tornado. Lemon reported for CNN’s documentary Race and Rage: The Beating of Rodney King, which aired 20 years to the day of the beating. He is also known for holding politicians and public officials accountable in his "No Talking Points" segment.
Lemon joined CNN after serving as a co-anchor for the 5 p.m. newscast for NBC5 News in Chicago. He joined the station in August 2003 as an anchor and reporter after working in New York as a correspondent for NBC News, The Today Show and NBC Nightly News. In addition to his reporting in New York, Lemon worked as an anchor on Weekend Today and on MSNBC. While at NBC, Lemon covered the explosion of Space Shuttle Columbia, SARS in Canada and numerous other stories of national and global importance.
In addition to NBC5 and NBC News, Lemon has served as a weekend anchor and general assignment reporter for WCAU-TV, an NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, an anchor and investigative reporter for KTVI-TV in St. Louis and an anchor for WBRC-TV in Birmingham. He began his career at WNYW in New York City as a news assistant while still in college.
In 2009, Ebony named him as one of the Ebony Power 150: the most influential Blacks in America. He has won an Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the capture of the Washington, D.C. snipers. He won an Emmy for a special report on real estate in Chicagoland and various other awards for his reporting on the AIDS epidemic in Africa and Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, he won three more local Emmys for his reporting in Africa and a business feature about Craigslist, an online community.
Lemon serves as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College, teaching and participating in curriculum designed around new media. He earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Brooklyn College and also attended Louisiana State University.
@DonLemonCNN
Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy- Two people, who are recently accused of disparaging black people, some of it caught on video and audiotape; yet they deny they are racist.
Last week on CNN Bundy was recorded saying:
“If I say Negro or black boy or slave, I’m not I’m not. If those people cannot take those kind of words and not be offensive then martin Luther King has not gotten his job done yet.”
So in some odd way to Cliven Bundy it’s Dr. King’s fault that the rest of the world doesn’t line up with his point of view.
That was last week.
This week there’s a new one from Los Angeles Clipper’s basketball team owner Donald Sterling.
“You want me to have hate towards black people? I don’t want you to have hate. That’s what people do. They turn things around. I want you to love them, privately. In your whole life every day you could be with them, every single day of your life… Not in public? But why publicize it on your Instagram and why bring them to my games?”
You can love them, “privately.”
Sounds like the old slave owner who would pick one of his slaves and “love” them “privately.”
It’s all too warped and twisted and really defies any explanation beyond bigotry and racism.
Clinical Psychologist Dr. Jeff Gardere said on CNN that, “I’m not surprised by any of this. We have people who have very racist views but who don’t consider themselves to be racist. They think the things that they say about certain people and their thought patterns are based in some sort of reality. They’re based on stereotypes of course.”
The stereotype is that people other than those who look like you are not considered worthy or good enough to be seen with you in public.
I’ve said for years now that the new racism is the denial of racism.
In the past few weeks after hearing from Bundy and Sterling, I have changed my mind.
The new racism is being unaware that you are racist.
And that is the worst kind of anything; to be woefully ignorant.
Because in the latest two cases ignorance truly is not bliss.
