'National Geographic' Reckons With Its Past: 'For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist'
Before it could publish an issue on race, the magazine first had to look at its own history. "Some of what you find in our archives leaves you speechless," writes editor Susan Goldberg.
If National Geographic's April issue was going to be entirely devoted to the subject of race, the magazine decided it had better take a good hard look at its own history.
Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg asked John Edwin Mason, a professor of African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia, to dive into the magazine's nearly 130-year archive and report back.
What Mason found was a long tradition of racism in the magazine's coverage: in its text, its choice of subjects, and
