I was unable to attend the Boxes and Walls event so I decided to do a lengthy interview with roommate Dequone Jackson. We are from two different co-cultural groups because he is a Black male and I am a White male. Both of us came from very different backgrounds and somehow still managed to end up at the same university, with similar interests. In my interview with Dequone I asked him some pretty hard questions and he was very willing to answer them to the best of his ability. Before the conversation with my roommate I felt like I knew almost everything about Dequone, but after talking to him on a deeper level, I now know how he feels to be a Black male in the United States. The first subject we talked about was Dequone’s background information.
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Since high school, he has been around white people the majority of his time. This had caused him to be comfortable around White people and has almost assimilated him into the norms of Whiteness. He also explained to me that he enjoyed living with White people because he can hear our opinion on race related issues. Had he been around just Black people, he may end up with biased opinions on these types of subject matter and maybe even form stereotypes or prejudices against White people based on his peer’s …show more content…
If the media were to report on black on black murders, they would not get as many views because society already has a symbolic prejudice against Blacks; they are violent because of their membership to this co-culture. With coverage of White on Black murders, media sources are able to gain more views and enforce the political agenda for the division between races. This type of reporting given by new stations, such as Fox News, has led Dequone to fear for his life every time he interacts with police, just because he is black. Stories along the lines of “Unarmed Black man killed by cop” not only sets negative stereotypes for Black individuals, but it also makes cops seems aggressive towards all Black people. This fact alone instills the fear that Dequone and many other Black individuals have about attacks by police. Although the stories portrayed by the media may be true, they need to focus the conversations on enlightening material that sparks intelligent debates and not just those that attract
Since high school, he has been around white people the majority of his time. This had caused him to be comfortable around White people and has almost assimilated him into the norms of Whiteness. He also explained to me that he enjoyed living with White people because he can hear our opinion on race related issues. Had he been around just Black people, he may end up with biased opinions on these types of subject matter and maybe even form stereotypes or prejudices against White people based on his peer’s …show more content…
If the media were to report on black on black murders, they would not get as many views because society already has a symbolic prejudice against Blacks; they are violent because of their membership to this co-culture. With coverage of White on Black murders, media sources are able to gain more views and enforce the political agenda for the division between races. This type of reporting given by new stations, such as Fox News, has led Dequone to fear for his life every time he interacts with police, just because he is black. Stories along the lines of “Unarmed Black man killed by cop” not only sets negative stereotypes for Black individuals, but it also makes cops seems aggressive towards all Black people. This fact alone instills the fear that Dequone and many other Black individuals have about attacks by police. Although the stories portrayed by the media may be true, they need to focus the conversations on enlightening material that sparks intelligent debates and not just those that attract