Week Ten Blog

This week, we discussed Race and Criminality in the media.
I found the readings for this week very interesting in the way that the media and our society constructs race and the dynamics that occur in crime between African-American's and Whites. In Carol Stabile's article "Criminalizing Black Culture" she discusses the inequality of the media and criminal justice systems in America towards African Americans throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Narratives of black perpetrators and white female victims, as well as blaming African American women for the cause of crime in young men, were used heavily by the media in different news stories. Not only were African American men targeted by the media in news stories, but they were also targeted on the streets, many times wrongly accused for crimes they did not commit simply because they were black and in the place where police could target them. We see several instances in politics where African American men were blamed for the countries high crime rates. In Bushes 1988 campaign we see fear narratives being used in the media, where he tried to show his opponent Dukakis as being soft on crime. The specific case was used in an add that showed an African American man Willie Horton recieving privelges in prison, being let out to go into the community where he committed murder and rape. These narratives illicit fear in American's, showing them that our society could be unsafe if we are soft on crime. This also further reinforced the idea of black perpetrators and white female victims.  I find it interesting that society's ideas about crime and who commits it are highly influenced by the media and the images that they put forth. In reality, most of the crime committed is between young white males in a lower socio-economic status. This goes to show how the media's portrayals of crime are not always accurate.

In Race, Lies, and Videotapes: The L.A. Upheaval and the media, mark Schubb gives us an idea of the media's interpretation of the 1992 LA riots and the stereotypes that were used and shown to Americans about the people who were rioting. During the riots, journalists were videotaping footage and narrating, whithout actually going into the field and getting interviews with the rioters first hand. Journalists described the rioters as gang-bangers, thugs, holligans, who were setting a bad example for future generations. They were blaming the individual for the cause of this event, insinuating that the riots occurred because of people who were innately bad or just out looking for trouble. Instead of taking into account underlying systmeic factors of the cause of the riots such as: psychological oppression from law enforcement, lack of opportunity and jobs, poor education, low-income families, urban decay, just to name a few. There are a whole host of other factors that accummulate on each other to explain the causes and factors behind the LA riots that journalists failed to mention.

In class we watched some of the documentary Crips and Bloods which gave us insight into the history behind the formation of gangs in LA, and why they became so violent. A whole host of different factors were brought up including psychological oppression, degredation, and racism of police officers towards African American's. During the 1960s young African American males were not allowed to join the boyscouts, so they started forming their own groups. After the constant mistreatment and segregation from the police, they were at the point of being degraded so much that a deep seated hatred developed for themeselves, white people, and the urban environment that they lived in. The government didn't put enough time and money into restoring these LA neighborhood's, that they eventually decayed and became places of opportunity for crime to occur. The more that African Americans became degraded, the more anger was built up that eventually had to become channeled through some way, shape, or form. Because they had no one else to identity with besides themeselves, they formed gangs which fulfilled love, belonging, and esteem needs and gave themeselves a sense of identity. Many African American young men felt like they had nothing to live for, no purpose, direction, or reason to follow societys norms because they were not respected. This brought up the notion of mutual respect and having a reason for caring in African American's. Why should I respect you and your property if you don't respect me, and take the time to fix this urban decay? All of these factors and more played a part in the formation of the Bloods and the Crips.

In the News media today, it seems like we don't see the same amount of criminalizing of black culture compared to the Watts rebellion era and the 1992 LA upheaval. Most of the crime I have been noticing in the media are controversial trials and random other insignificant crimes. Maybe this means that we are shifting away from racist tendencies in the way the media portrays crime to society.