General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Three burglars entered an Oklahoma home. The owners son opened fire with an AR-15, deputies say. [View all]Orrex
(63,199 posts)When a shooting victim is black, the media has a well-documented tendency to paint the deceased as a dangerous miscreant, dredging up irrelevant criminal records and any unflattering picture they can find. This happens even when the deceased is the victim of outright murder (as in the recent stabbing in NYC), and it's certainly the case when a black man is killed by police. The assumption (and the corresponding narrative) is that, whatever the circumstances, the deceased was a dangerous character. A fifteen year old boy, for instance, will be described as a man, often in menacing terms (muscle-bound, intimidating, hulking, towering, etc.) If they can find a picture of the kid flashing gang signs on Halloween, then clearly he deserves to die for jaywalking.
When a shooting victim is white, that simply doesn't happen, or it happens very rarely. Hell, when the criminal is white, he's often painted as a misunderstood youth or a confused kid--even when he's in his upper 20s.
It's not the same note because there's no equity in it. The media clearly pursues a narrative heavily informed by the color of the person's skin, and the darker the skin, the less flattering the narrative.