It is inevitable that racism still occurs in this corrupt world.
Many people are oblivious in seeing racism but believe it or not, racism is
everywhere. Majority of racism is against African Americans; even after slavery
was ban, people still tend to declassify African Americans. I’m aware that
stopping racism is nearly impossible; but I think the news/television channels
should make an effort to stop the racism being shown on air.
The way African Americans are being portrayed on the news is
prejudice. News coverage tends to indirectly degrade African American citizens
by the reports they broadcast. If one were to watch the news all day about
crimes, they would come to an assumption that African Americans are responsible
for killing, stealing, and dealing drugs.
After doing research about
the news, I found out that crimes committed by non-African Americans take a
longer time to be reported and publicized. For example, in the Trayvon Martin
case, the news primarily found out about the case through social networking sites. This
video clearly states that it was brought up to news reporter’s attention about
the case via Twitter and Facebook. Harsh facebook comments and an abundance of
tweets are what fueled the news reporters to do a report about Trayvon Martin. I believe that if it was another child from a
different ethnicity, the news would have made more of an effort to have the
case on air. This is an example of racism; African Americans have the
disadvantage on being aired on the news about terror being done to them but are
easily being reported about them doing an act of terror. So the biggest issue
about the case was that if it wasn’t for the social networking sites, how long would it take the news to find out about Trayvon Martin?
It seems that every time I watch
the news and the crime section comes on, it always involves an African
American. The crime is reported in depth about how the crime was committed,
when the crime was committed, and who committed the crime. An ugly mug shot of
the “criminal” is always followed right after the report of the crime. This repetitive
action of displaying an African American for committing a crime causes other
Americans to fear African Americans because they are “dangerous”. I believe
that the news is the one blame about the derogative mindset that American citizens have
on African Americans.
The fear that the news implements to
other Americans about African Americans is harmful to our society. According to
this news report, a middle aged woman called the police on Henry Louis, a Harvard
professor, who was trying to get into his home late at night. The woman
reported seeing “two black males with backpacks” on the porch trying to force
entry in the home. When the police arrived, Henry refused to talk to them
because he knew he hadn’t committed any crime of breaking in. Upon refusing to
talk to the officer, Henry was suddenly arrested and taken to jail. The charges
were later dropped but the main idea was the prejudice mindset that was present
during the scene of the arrest. The officers mistreated Mr. Louis for no
apparent reason and had no right to arrest him without any valid evidence. The
news report did not cover the full story but it’s inevitable that the woman
that called the police and the police themselves were prejudice towards African
Americans.
Racism is still present all over the
world. It’s harder to see racism today than it was 20 years ago. I know that
racism will not end but it can be minimized. A good start would be minimizing
the amount of reports on African Americans and focusing on the positive aspects
on African Americans.
