Criminalize The POC Community Essay

When the next twitter hashtag is going viral on the death of another black African American all we seem to hear is the many different ways the media tries to criminalize the person who may be considered the victim in this situation. When the media starts talking they can change a victim into a thug and then make the story a whole new story than what it actually was. For a community that already goes through enough, this has to be one of the worst ways and one of the most effective ways to character assistant someone. That being said I will discuss in this essay how the media criminalizes the POC community. One of the many ways the media criminalizes the POC (People of Color) community is talking about that person’s background history. If they have had several run ins with the law in the past that is always brought up or their family members having prior issues with the police is mentioned as well to justify why the cop did what they did to the person. This can be dangerous because it …show more content…
to excuse their behavior. This alone further damages the image of the POC community, because the picture is already painted when you read a headline, no one goes to actually find out what happened they just listen to everything they hear. This also applies when there are protests. They call POC rioters, looters and white people more positive terms when protesting. They show only the bad protests, and never show the peaceful protests. They don’t show the cops and POC getting along, they only show them attacking and rioting. The POC community isn’t even given the benefit of the doubt. That’s why this makes it seem like one criminal represents us all, because you hear the about their criminal history, then they are labeled thugs, then protests are only shown as riots so it makes us (POC community) all look like threats to everyone including