PRECIS Ann Coulter’s column, “Media Finds Las Vegas Shooter’s Motive: He’s White” (Oct 12, 2017), asserts that the media is blaming white men for the violence in America. The author supports this claim by showing a few headlines from unidentified sources and outlets. The author’s purpose is to race-bait in order to shift the central political argument from gun control to race. Given the inflammatory language of this article and the rhetorical questions she wants attention drawn to, the intended audience of this article would be conspiracy theorists, gun enthusiasts, and racists.
Critical Analysis Despite the absurd headline of this article the first half of this column is adequately reasonable. Ann Coulter begins by just opening up a conversation of why an event so tragic and calamitous could have happened. She recognizes the situation the country is in which would be the utmost confusion mixed with growing fears. Americans are completely dumbfounded as to why a multimillionaire who wasn’t a religious zealot would arm himself to the teeth and lay down hellish fire upon thousands of innocent lives. So beginning in this article Ann Coulter was simply asking questions to open a conversation about what the motives of the gunman may
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This is where lunacy and racist meet to form an abomination not suitable to be seen by human eyes. Ann Coulter coughs up this nonsensical argument from out of thin air. She references a few headlines for her evidence to show that the media is attacking the white race especially males. This is questionable evidence at best though because there is no sourcing or any sort of mention as to where these headlines are coming from. A quick google search about the motives of the Las Vegas shooter will chaperon no articles expressing the belief that white males are responsible for the violence in
This chapter describes the story a Vietnamese boy Lac Su. His father was a Chinese and now his family is settled in America. Lac Su from the chapter seems to be an extremely sensitive, timid and scared kid who is finding difficulty in settling in such a different culture. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first one describes a horrible situation for the kid when he has to stay alone in the house and take care of his sister as his mother has left the house without telling any reason. Next morning he receives a call from his mother when she informs him about the reason that his father is hospitalized as he was beaten up and robbed by some Mexican thugs.
In the book, the essay written by Peggy McIntosh in 1988, describes the white privilege just as the expression of choices and personal decisions. Then, she makes that racism appear as the development of the behavior or lifestyle that each individual carry. This student thinks that she refers more to the individual rights that people have when defining white privilege. She cites that the privilege is granted to the whites, but she does not say who grants them, or how this privilege is granted. Besides, she refers to white privilege as a system when she says “Disapproving of the systems won’t be enough to change them” (Harvey,2009).
Steve Chapman, a columnist and editor of the Chicago Tribune, perfectly depicts in his article the ever-growing hostility that America faces, not limiting its tensions to that of which it faces with our foreign adversaries, specifically North Korea, but including that of its internal enemy: the philosophy of racial superiority. Chapman appeals to those who stand against the hatred and prejudice that has come to light on behalf of white nationalists, taking into account the latest incidents of Charlottesville, Virginia. The journalist mentions that, in spite of the recent occurrences that have overtaken Americans in a sudden mental war between differentiating factions, white nationalists face an imminent defeat. Instead of elaborating on how
Ann Coulter believes that Sayfullo Habibullavic Saipov did what he did because he “was probably so ground down by islamophobia that he felt the only option left to him was the event in lower Manhattan”. There must have been a stronger motivation that caused this individual to do what he did. Maybe it could have been racism, islamophobia, or something greater. There had been cases were racism does play a major part into people’s actions. Could it be that maybe the “irrational
My initial reaction to this article was that of agreement. McIntosh describes white privilege vividly as the idea of an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions and more. In other words, a white person in the United States has on his or her back an invisible weightless knapsack granting favored status, acceptance, and more. It was interesting seeing a white woman’s perspective on the topic of privilege. As I was reading I was reflecting on moments in my life where I have whiteness white privilege and how it worked against me. I’ve seen white privilege illustrated at various time throughout my life. My personal favorite part of this article was the list of daily effects of White privilege that the author complied. It was interesting yet not relatable. To me, this list was eye opening. I understood the point she was trying to make with it. I cannot
A number of recent investigations have concluded that news programs often systematically misrepresent black Americans as perpetrators of crime and whites as victims of or defenders against lawbreaking (Dixon 1). According to those investigations by Dixon and Linz (2000a), “Blacks were twice as likely as Whites to be seen as perpetrators, six times more likely to be portrayed as perpetrators than officers, and overrepresented as criminals.”
Racism has become more and more outraged throughout the years, to where it has divided our country. It’s made us fear our authorities, our neighbors, and ‘brothers’. The excerpt in “The Fire This Time”, titled “White Rage” by Carol Anderson, shows the progress that hasn’t been made because of white rage. Racism is not a fresh topic, it has been around since the times of slavery, only now has it been ignited and is now more of a threat than anything else in this country. The new subtle form of racism should not be accepted in society because it is barbarous, immoral, and discriminatory.
When news outlets broke the news on “Who was Stephen Paddock?”, headlines followed by "He was a quiet man. He liked to gamble, and enjoyed country music.” Oh and let’s not forget that he also had just murdered 50+ people. When tragic events occur, reporters and editors agonize over the words they will use to present the news to the eyes of the reader. As the United States is still recovering from the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, news coverage is steadily emerging focusing on the tragedy itself and the debate over gun control; however, another genre emerged as well: the examination of the shooter based on stereotypes. As the occurrence of public shootings has increased over the years, the way in which media cover these violent stories can have broad social implications, in that media often include an implicit bias when reporting leading to the creation and perpetuation of racial and mental health stereotypes. In this case, various media outlets have presented the 64-year-old shooter Stephen Paddock in a different light than past mass shooters have been presented. The media’s framing of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, and specifically the shooter, influence people’s perception of the individual and his crime, and the persistent exposure of certain characteristics cultivate a common understanding for the audience, and therefore the media has a strong effect on the individuals.
Devega, Chauncey. "White America’s Racial Amnesia: The Sobering Truth about Our Country’s “race Riots”." Saloncom RSS. 1 May 2015. Web. 2 July 2015.
“It is only White privilege…. that allows us often times to view criminals of the dominant group as mere individuals while too often viewing Black and brown folk through the lens of a group pathology whenever one of theirs violate our legal and moral norms” (Tim Wise, 2009) This opening statement, given by Tim Wise at a White Privilege conference in 2009, was one of the first to catch my attention because it is nothing less than fact. There have been many instances of violence in this country, perpetrated by Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, the list can go on and on. However, the difference between when Whites commit crimes versus when minorities commit crimes, is White Privilege. Peggy McIntosh (1988) described White privilege as a set of undeserved benefits that a White person in America can use every day, yet they remain unaware of the privilege they have. According to Christine Emba (2009) of Washington Post, White privilege is the level of “societal advantage that comes with being seen as the norm in America, automatically conferred irrespective of wealth, gender or other factors.” It is
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union”1 - On March the 18th 2008 Barack Obama opened his speech on race, in Philadelphia, with this sentence. From the open sentence you can see that this speech isn’t any speech, perform by any orator. It’s a speech with a main message, performed for the people, to creates a brighter future for all the American people and to change history.
As for the fate of the last white man, here follows the tale I know. Imagine the beginning of chaos: countries at war, cities collapsed in the earthquakes. We are, then, in the desert the day after the catastrophe.
The media, in particular broadcasting news, has catered to stereotypes of non-whites by over-representing minorities as the assailants in violent crime. These types of practices are clearly detrimental to the advancement of those who have been handicapped by the ignorance of the past. In the first part of the paper we examine the effects of the rise of local news, charting specific studies
In her TED Talk at UC, Christina Brown demonstrates another way allies can be effective anti-racists: Wake up. Show up. Shut up. Give up. Her first command “’wake up” is telling whites to wake up to reality. She wants them to realise that everything is not okay and that people of color are not just irrationally angry at nothing. In Racism without Racists, it is pointed out that the majority of white people (56%) believe that American has experienced a lot of racial progress yet when Silva asked blacks the same question, only 29% agreed with that statement(158). Brown believes that if allies want to do something about race, they need to wake up and realise the ugly truth that racism exists. Her second command “show up” is encouraging allies
Ironically, the ‘fake news’ narrative is mentioned four times in less than ten seconds intervals, accordingly showing a clip of Trump’s response to Charlottesville in which he furthers the ‘fake news’ claims and continues his initial statement of blame for Charlottesville’s lying with both sides. FOX News fails to mention details on the location and size of the rally, and repeatedly mentions the ‘alt-left side and Anti-fa’ as being violent and weaponized, to sway blame away from those there attending the rally and put the focus on the counter-protestors, or alt-left. Hannity is constantly shifting the emphasis of the video from Trump’s response to all thw wrong deeds of counter protesters, the alt-left, and democratic media. Correspondingly, in Hannity’s defense of Trump’s remarks of Charlottesville he mentions four of President Obama’s high-profile racial cases, for example the murder of Treyvon Martin and Michael Brown, claiming that he,