Media creates meaning about race and ethnicity, and plays an important role in shaping the way we understand race as part of our identity, our history, our social institutions, and our everyday lives. Often used interchangeably, race is a way of classifying individuals and groups on the basis of physical characteristics, particularly one’s skin color. Ethnicity delineates one’s place of origin or nationality, one’s cultural background or ancestry, one’s language and by extension, one’s belief system. Race has been a big topic in the past year, mostly centered on interactions between police and African-American communities. A police officer's first order of business is to serve and protect. However, this hasn’t held much truth in many cases
…show more content…
The case of Michael Brown, the unarmed, black teenager shot and killed by a white police officer, continues to make headlines weeks after the incident sparked riots and outrage in Ferguson, Missouri, and prompted a national debate (The Week, August 2014). Meanwhile, the case of Dillon Taylor, a white 20-year-old shot and killed by a black policeman outside a 7/11 in Utah has received virtually no media coverage beyond local news reports. His brother, who was with him at the 7/11, says Taylor was unarmed (The Washington Times, August 2014). The light coverage of the Taylor case by the mainstream media prompted many conservative critics to address the racial double standard. The Washington Times reports, "Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh blamed the discrepancy between the two cases on 'the liberal world view' that portrays whites as oppressors and blacks as victims (The Washington Times, August …show more content…
I genuinely care about less black people and less police officers dying in the streets. So I’m going to give it to you straight.
Black people in the United States are more likely to be victims of violent confrontations with police officers than whites because they commit more violent crimes than whites per capita. African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated populations (Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, NAACP). Black Lives Matter is an international activist movement, originating in the African American community, that campaigns against violence toward black people. #BlackLivesMatter regularly organizes protests around the deaths of black people in killings by law enforcement officers, and broad issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the U.S criminal justice system. Where were these Black Lives Matter protesters after the slaying of Chicago’s little Tyshawn Lee, the 9-year-old lured into an alley and shot to death by a black man seeking gang-related vengeance against his father? Did his murder at the hands of a black gangster not warrant wall-to-wall news coverage? No, because the ugly truth behind #BlackLivesMatter is that black people killing other black people does nothing to advance its political power in the same way that one white cop killing a black criminal
The case of Michael Brown, the unarmed, black teenager shot and killed by a white police officer, continues to make headlines weeks after the incident sparked riots and outrage in Ferguson, Missouri, and prompted a national debate (The Week, August 2014). Meanwhile, the case of Dillon Taylor, a white 20-year-old shot and killed by a black policeman outside a 7/11 in Utah has received virtually no media coverage beyond local news reports. His brother, who was with him at the 7/11, says Taylor was unarmed (The Washington Times, August 2014). The light coverage of the Taylor case by the mainstream media prompted many conservative critics to address the racial double standard. The Washington Times reports, "Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh blamed the discrepancy between the two cases on 'the liberal world view' that portrays whites as oppressors and blacks as victims (The Washington Times, August …show more content…
I genuinely care about less black people and less police officers dying in the streets. So I’m going to give it to you straight.
Black people in the United States are more likely to be victims of violent confrontations with police officers than whites because they commit more violent crimes than whites per capita. African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated populations (Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, NAACP). Black Lives Matter is an international activist movement, originating in the African American community, that campaigns against violence toward black people. #BlackLivesMatter regularly organizes protests around the deaths of black people in killings by law enforcement officers, and broad issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the U.S criminal justice system. Where were these Black Lives Matter protesters after the slaying of Chicago’s little Tyshawn Lee, the 9-year-old lured into an alley and shot to death by a black man seeking gang-related vengeance against his father? Did his murder at the hands of a black gangster not warrant wall-to-wall news coverage? No, because the ugly truth behind #BlackLivesMatter is that black people killing other black people does nothing to advance its political power in the same way that one white cop killing a black criminal