Media And African American Culture

Great Essays
The Use of Media and the African American Culture
A rhetorical trend is emerging in cases of police violence and corruption. Across the country, police are arresting, assaulting, and killing women and men without cause. Police officers take advantage of how much power they have over citizens, specifically African Americans. In other words, it is determined that police are committing serious offenses, but because of an unjust application of the law, they are completely let off. Families are let down, entire communities are outraged, and victims are given no hope by a system that should be protecting them.
The way the media perceives the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, who was shot and killed on Aug. 9, by Darren Wilson, a
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In the late 40’s African Americans did not see themselves as having a major role to play in images, it was hard for them to emotionally consider the significance of a camera during the years of racial apartheid. The degrading images of blackness that circulated widely from racist white imaginations could be viewed as true life images. “More than any other image-making tool, the camera offered African-Americans, disempowered in white culture, a way to empower ourselves through representation.” In other words, hooks explains that the camera was supposed to create a method for black people to be able to change the precedent of their representation in America set by white people. The author points out that the camera was something that has been taken for granted in the black community because, usually, when the camera was being used, it would portray black Americans in the wrong light and misrepresent who they were as a group of people. hooks emphasizes that white supremacist and male supremacist ethics are regulated in the media, which produce “specific images, representations of race, of blackness that support and maintain the oppression, exploitation, and overall domination of all black people” Sadly, the effects of the flagrant discrimination African Americans experienced more than sixty years ago can still be felt …show more content…
They create the false impression that all "blacks" are violent criminals without specifically saying it, but when people view their sites and watch their forecasts they tend to prejudge African Americans. They take a small group of people and generalize a whole race. They don 't show black people peacefully protesting. They show only the people who are not being peaceful. Why do black citizens start riots? The rioting that occurred after the death of Michael Brown was connected to the intense actions of where systematic racism is undoubtedly at work. The media tends to make black folks in this situation look like wild savages perpetrating fear in the community. There is never justice served when police kill blacks but with black on black crime justice is always served and the murderer gets time in prison versus a police who gets let off after taking a life. That is why the riots are taking place. Justice is blind, swift, and unbalanced. Is being black in America a crime? Should minorities have to “act respectable” by suspicious white people 's standards to avoid being, harassed, arrested, or gunned down? Michael Brown was not an isolated death by a cop in Ferguson, or in any place in America, because it happens everyday. He was just one more dead black male killed by a white officer. Michael, along with Trayvon, Freddie, and the other black males who suffered, are only

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