>>> kirsten neilsen <kirsten at infothecary.org> 04/26/99 05:59PM >>>
> CB: They do that by UNDERemphasizing it in incidents such as the
> current one. I think there is almost no problem whatsoever by the
> media or others overemphasizing racism in this incident or in
> general.
Kristen replied:
here is where we really differ. race is underemphasized in areas where it is transparent already to the general population: welfare, poverty, education, crime - it's almost endless, really. and that, i would agree with you, is a big problem. however, the media have no need to underemphasize explicitly racist incidents, such as the dragging death of robert bird, because this allows people to go on thinking that racism is the of extremists, devients, etc. and is not a fundamental element of our society. by suggesting that individuals, and not our society as a whole, are responsible for racism, this works to help maintain the transparency of racism, not to undermine it, as you suggest.
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Charles: My specific response to this is that when incidents are at a certain level of blatancy, the media cannot deny the racism , so they fall back to something like what you say: trying to play it off as atypcial or rather emphasizing the extremeness of it which is somewhat atypical.
But the solution to this problem is not to deemphasize the racism of the most extreme incidents. The approach should be to demonstrate that the extreme cases are part of a continuum of pervasive racism which includes the "moderate" to the extreme. Racism is so pervasive that as a matter of chance some individuals will take it to an extreme. One way to get rid of the extremists is to irradicate the lesser levels of racism from the mainstream. In other words, the extreme cases are an opportunity to point to the mainstream problem. That is the proper way to characterize incidents such as Littleton, and that is my protest about the playingdown of the racism.
Charles Brown
i would add that this incident does offer the media an opportunity to explore the connection between powerlessness and racism. in other words why these boys, who felt powerless, adopted racism as a response. that would be a valuable discussion but one i doubt we'll see very soon.
kirsten