General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: We see regular, often harsh criticism of the media for their decisions on what and who to cover [View all]StarfishSaver
(18,486 posts)And you're already tone policing DU members. Interesting.
But to your point, let me explain it again.
Arguing that lack of media coverage of missing and murdered Black women is somehow justified by the low percentage of Black women as part of the overall population is a complete non-sequitur. We're not talking about coverage of Black women in general or white women in general - we're talking about coverage of a particular segment of society - women who are missing and murdered. The overall population numbers of women in America is completely irrelevant to the topic.
Using your reasoning, sports coverage should feature only white athletes because Black people are a small percentage of the overall population.
Of course, that would be stupid since we're not talking about the overall population but the segment of the population that plays professional sports. Given that Black athletes represent a much larger portion of that demographic than Blacks represent in the nation as a whole, it's appropriate for the media to give substantially attention to Black athletes, even though Black people represent a minority of the American population. Doing otherwise would be journalistic malpractice.
The same reasoning applies here. The overall population of Blacks versus whites in America is completely irrelevant to the topic of how the media covers cases of missing and murdered women. Just like The fact that white men make up a substantial portion of the American population doesn't lead us to we expect the media to cover substantial numbers of missing and murdered white men, you can't justify the lack of coverage of Black and brown women in this regard by pointing to the percentage of Black women as a percentage of all people in the United States.
If you really want to make a proportionality argument, you need to come up with some numbers related to the topic at hand, I. E., the numbers of women who are missing and murdered And what percentage of those women are Black and brown versus white. If you have those numbers and those numbers show that a significant number of those women are white and a significant minority of those are Black and brown, you may have an argument justifying the lack of coverage of the latter. But otherwise, your proportionality argument falls completely flat.
I hope that clears things up for you .
Again, welcome to DU. Enjoy your stay.