Q&A: Reporter talks Houston and his take on covering culturally underrepresented communities

This was originally featured in the Houston Chronicle's HouWeAre newsletter about race, culture and identity. You can sign up here. Today, we're bringing back Sam González Kelly, a metro reporter at the Houston Chronicle who focuses on communities of color and the issues most affecting historically marginalized communities in one of the nation's most diverse cities. The Chicago native's curiosity about the untold, the offbeat and the unsung is infectious. We're thrilled to bring him back. ** Q: Welcome back! Now that you’ve been in Houston for more than a year and covered everything from the police beat to our diverse communities to the Astros' World Series run, what have you learned about the city? To you, what makes Houston Houston? A: Oh man, there’s so much I could say here but if I had to distill it down to a few basic points, it would be that there are interesting people with interesting stories in every corner of the city, in positions big and small. I think that’s probably true for most places, but what makes Houston special in that regard is the diversity of its residents and its cultures, and the way they’re all tied together by this shared sense of place. Each community puts its own unique stamp on the signifiers of Houston and Southern life. The things we think of as “Houston” — i.e. cowboy culture, barbecue, Astros fandom, whatever – they all exist in Black, white, Latino and Asian communities, but manifest themselves in slightly different ways. Those little idiosyncrasies are what give Houston such a dynamic character, and mining them has been such a privilege. The other defining characteristic of Houston, for me, is its history. Everyone says that Houston does a poor job of preserving its history, which is maybe true on an institutional level, but the distinctive cultures of this city have been built over generations by people who carry that history with them. (My latest story on) Rodney Griffin is a good example of that. Hearing Rodney tell his story to me firsthand provides me with an education that I couldn’t get anywhere else, and I value that immensely. Q: Griffin is an alum of Worthing High School whose chess team desegregated the city’s high school league 60 years ago. Was there anything else you learned from him or about him that didn’t make it in your story? A: Like I said (previously), talking to Rodney gives me an education I couldn’t get anywhere else. As a young, white-passing man from Chicago, I could never understand what it was like to grow up Black in the Jim Crow South, but hearing Rodney talk about his upbringing paints a picture of a totally different world, and not even just from a racial perspective: I loved the tidbit he shared about his parents buying an encyclopedia from a door-to-door salesman; I don’t know a single person who even owns an encyclopedia, let alone someone who bought one from a door-to-door salesman. One cool anecdote that he shared, which didn’t make it into the story, is that several years ago, when he posted about his experiences at Worthing on Facebook, he got a response from a man whose father was on the Jefferson Davis Chess Team, which pulled out of the tournament soon after Worthing entered. Apparently, the principal at the time had threatened to fire the teacher who sponsored the chess club for allowing the students to participate in an integrated competition. Decades later, when Houston ISD was in the process of renaming the school, someone proposed renaming it after the principal during that era and the man’s father stood up and opposed it, (on the grounds that) the principal was a racist. I haven’t fact-checked this independently, but the school was eventually renamed Northside High School. Q: The HouWeAre team has been impressed with how you’ve embedded yourself in Houston’s communities and with its people; a lot of your stories feel like getting to know a friend. How do you approach reporting and storytelling? A: Thank you for saying that! I try my best with stories like these to make my interviews feel like a chat among friends, and I think what it really boils down to is just not taking myself or my stories too seriously. In (the Griffin story), that meant bringing a chess board with me to the interview so that we could play a game while we talked. In the past, I’ve played basketball for a story about the anniversary of Yao Ming’s arrival in Houston, and I’ve danced at punk shows while writing about that scene. I like to think little things like that lower barriers between myself and my subjects, because they understand that I don’t consider myself above or different from them in any way. I understand the journalistic edict of maintaining some detachment from your sources, but unless you’re writing about people who wield institutional power, I think that standard is kind of misguided, and part of the reason that marginalized communities don’t always trust mainstream media. I don’t think it's wrong to tell the average Houstonian that you’re on their side and you’re just like them, and if you can make their experience with you a fun one, they’ll open up to you more and your story will be better for it. Q: Anything else you want to add? A: Just that I’m really grateful for everyone in this city who’s embraced me with open arms and let me tell their stories. We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here.

Q&A: Reporter talks Houston and his take on covering culturally underrepresented communities

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