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
Now that the spectacle of Donald Sterling is somewhat behind us, where do we go from here?
Every time something like this happens many people get all bent out of shape, up in arms and outraged.
They hoop and holler, stomp their feet and yell at the television.
Then they simmer down and ease back into their normal lives until the next time, until the next outrage opportunity presents itself.
While it is true that Donald Sterling’s words were disgusting and vile, he’s not the only one.
He’s just the one who got caught, the one who gets the attention.
CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill says, “The Sterling controversy resonates with black people because it speaks to a bigger problem in their everyday lives. The sentiments expressed by Sterling play out in the daily racial micro-aggressions experienced by black people at work, school, and public space. He unwittingly confirmed what we intuitively knew to be true: many people still hold on to anti-black racism.”
He hit the nail on the head, especially with the micro-aggression part.
Those micro-aggressions are the thousand little pin pricks that happen on a daily bases which cause many of us to sometimes overreact and blow up over the smallest transgression.
How many times have you witnessed a friend or co-worker losing their cool over something that most of the white people around you didn’t understand but you did?
How many times have a friend or co-worker pulled you aside and said, “Hey man or hey girl, chill. You’re scaring the white people?”
It’s funny but it happens.
And when it does, it does shake you back into reality.
But back to my opening line, where do we go from here?
Here’s what I think.
Americans have to stop assuaging their own guilt about racism by thinking that if they condemn someone like Donald Sterling or Paula Deen loud enough or forcefully enough that they’re free and clear and are no longer racist.
That is not so.
When it comes to racism it’s the everyday things that matter the most to the most people.
Everyday things like having few if any black friends in your circle, like associating with or hiring mostly people who look just like you, like moving to a black neighborhood because it’s cheaper but not socializing with your neighbors because you secretly fear them, like not being able to tell black people apart, like not being able to appreciate black beauty, like thinking every black person in a store works there.
I could go on and on and on but I’ll stop there and just let you think about it.