Black Believer
It is impossible to discuss whiteness without discussing blackness, and how these concepts affect the interactions between people by shaping ideology. It’s not usually considered news when people hear that racism grew out of slavery. It is, however, seemingly shocking when white people hear that they consistently play into -and capitalize off of- the vestiges of slavery in this country.
Directly following the events that ended slavery in America, black people -now free- were still prohibited from buying property, voting, and marrying whites. Nearly a hundred years later, black people were just as oppressed. Although things had seemingly ameliorated by this time: black people could work for pay and go to school, the country still largely separated whites and blacks by using classism that favored white people in a “separate but equal” system that turned out to be very separate and not-so- equal.
Today, there is a blatant ignorance in white society that makes people believe that because we’ve had a black president, and there are famous and admired black musicians, ball players and interracial couples, then we must be passed a “race issue.” They could not be more wrong. We no longer favor Jim Crow laws in this country but the lingering effects of an American society that believes that black people are not worth the same education, jobs, protection, or respect as white people are still very much alive. Where do we see it? the news media.
There is a tendency for news- like movies, TV, and your peers- to paint black people with a criminal brush. This matters because it reinforces the idea in the minds of black children and white children alike, that black people are inherently violent and more likely to commit crimes and somehow be “less-refined” than white people.
It may seem as if there is substantial evidence supporting the fact that black people are indeed more violent based on the amount of available sources that show black suspects and black criminals. However, the media releases images and stories based what they know will sell, what they think the readers want, what they feel the readers will identify with. And in America: it’s deep-rooted in racial bias. The comfortably to ignore and perpetuate black people’s media portrayals is an act of whiteness. Because white people are the majority, what white people will accept as news, is what will pass for news. For this reason alone, black people are often underrepresented or misrepresented to the masses which only continues an ancient pattern.
The idea that criminal behavior and all of its tragedy is somehow linked to blackness is not only an ignorantly familiar one, but it’s also a dangerously pervasive one. When black reporters have attempted to fight for more accurate representation, they are often met with resistance and confusion from their superiors (usually white men) and readers. Many black reporters have been assigned to cover stories in “urban” areas and are limited to reporting on black issues that are deemed too insignificant for white people to cover.
The ability for white people to sit back and regard blackness as a dubious entity that they can’t get to close to, is quite laughable when realizing that white people created it. Through racial superiority, white people have been able to convince themselves and others for generations to come that there is indeed a difference in humans based on phenotype alone. There is not. Because of these convictions, it is easier to write stories, tell stories and believe stories that cast black people as villains. Are you a believer?
CommenTerry 