The Dehumanization Of Black Males: A Social Media Analysis

It is no secret that the media is able to influence the general public’s opinion on most anything. Whether the subject is fiction or non, movies, documentaries, and the news especially, are capable of swaying the public’s opinions and perceptions one way or the other. Not even the world of law enforcement is safe from the media’s purview (Barlow, M. H. and Barlow, D. E. and Chiricos T. G., 1995), as media portrayals often romanticize law enforcement as a well oiled machine that always gets the bad guy, and has a perfect relationship with the public. On top of this, the media has displayed a poor habit of portraying crime as predominantly violent and racial, rather than showing the whole picture(Gilliam, F. D. and Iyengar, S. and Simon, A. and Wright, O., 1996). In this paper, the motives driving these depictions, as well as the scope and effect of the media’s influence on public perception of law enforcement, will be explored and discussed.

While the Civil Rights Movement is considered a success, there is still racism in the United States today, in which blacks are still viewed as overly aggressive and overtly dangerous compared to whites. The racism we are familiar with today is called “institutional racism” and is not only shown in workplaces, but in schools and courtrooms. Institutional racism is defined as a pattern of social institutions who give negative treatment to a group of people based on race. To elaborate on institutional racism, starting with pre-school, black children make up only 18 percent of the pre-school population, but make up almost half of out of school suspensions. In K-12 black children are three times as likely to be suspended than white children. Now moving to the court system, black children make up nearly 60 percent of children in prison and are more likely to be sentenced as adults than white children. These statistics show that black’s, even black children, are more likely to be viewed as dangerous and subject to worse sentences.

Adolescent Black males throughout the years have been subject and victim to numerous economic, socioeconomic, and environmental disadvantages. In many inner-city neighborhoods, these disadvantages have led to an increase in violence among these adolescent African American males, especially in the educational system. Violence among African American males in schools is something that increases tremendously each year; a 2010 study in Education Week showed that over 70% of the students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were African American students. This can be explained

Why as white people have we been lulled into thinking its safe to be around other white people. Why have we been taught since birth that it’s the people of that other color we need to fear? They’re the ones that will slit your throat (Moore 57). The mass media has played and will continue to play a crucial role in the way white Americans perceive African-Americans. As a result of the overwhelming media focus on crime, drug use, gang violence, and other forms of anti-social behavior among African-Americans, the media is fostering a distorted public perception of African-Americans. Looking at past examples of African Americans treatment

How would you feel if the outcome of your interaction with authority depended on whether you were black, Latino, or white? Unfortunately, police brutality is the sad reality that many black and Latino boys experience in their childhood. The disadvantages of their upbringing results to the reinforcement of societal restrictions on their success. On a positive note, education becomes salvation to marginalized group because it provides them means to escape the system that prevents them from becoming successful. However, Charles M. Blows and Victor M. Rios reveal that black and Latino boys are at a disadvantage in the school to prison pattern. Therefore, the recent death of Michael Brown only heightens public awareness of police brutality on colored males. According to Charles M. Blow, bias educational system is a major factor in criminalization of black and Latino boys. But we cannot disregard that a significant perpetrator of racism is ignorance and false media representation. Therefore an increase of awareness of the existence of discrimination and improvement on media depiction of black and Latino characters would render racism defenseless.

“The racial disparities within the two systems are so similar and so glaring that it becomes impossible not to connect them.” The causes of why they are so deeply connected lie within the educational system. “It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for the school-to-prison pipeline; however, the reasons are many, but the solutions are not as plentiful” (Travis). The best practices to implement into the educational system is to allow room for change and to not label students based on past experiences and history. Students cannot be expected to change if there is no opportunity or support for change. Another practice is to completely assess the individual as a whole before deciding a suitable administrative punishment. Teachers should not be quick to judge a person by their actions, but by the reason behind their actions. After pinpointing the source of their behavior, can the education officials truly begin rehabilitating student, but enables them to realize their mistake of their disciplinary actions. The education system needs to create a balance between a system which will provide discipline and reasonable punishment for each offense. Students should not be expelled for disruptive behavior and there should be equal punishment to every student when applicable. Be able to provide the much needed support to students instead of sending them home, to the police, or to juvenile detention centers. The statistics only worsen as minorities transition into adulthood and the educational system should decrease the number of minorities going through the school-to-prison pipeline and increase the number of graduates among minority students. “One and three African Americans and one and six Latinos males will be incarcerated in their lifetime”

Racism and discrimination continue to be a prevalent problem in American society. Although minorities have made significant strides toward autonomy and equality, the images in media, specifically television, continue to misrepresent and manipulate the public opinion of blacks. It is no longer a blatant practice upheld by the law and celebrated with hangings and beatings, but instead it is a subtle practice that is perceived in the entertainment and media industries. Whether it’s appearing in disparaging roles or being negatively portrayed in newscasts, blacks continue to be the victims of an industry that relies on old ideas to appeal to the majority. The viscous cycle that is the unconscious racism of the media continues to not only be

Within media and society there are seemingly different representations of race and crime. They are different in how they are constructed for their perceived audience in the majority and the opinion that is supposed to be evoked by the event. Within the public perception of crime in reality there is abundant racism that has been socially constructed over many generations. Whereas media crime is gentrified and critiqued in such a way as to support fears and intrigue into crime through violence from what could rarely happen to the viewer. When both of these are combined the social construction of race is reinforced. Through crime television shows the allure of feeling a crime through draws an audience.

2) applied mostly to poor, minority serving schools. She argues that the surveillance in minority serving schools is disproportionately focused on punishment and that intimidation tactics divert money that could potentially be spent on counselors or programs to help solve long-term issues within minority student bodies who already face “educational inequalities to the highest degree” (Anderson para. 7). In Anderson’s opinion, schools that allow surveillance in the name of safety wrongly put preemptive discipline and punishment before quality education and connection with students, which sends the message that students are seen as criminals first and that “white children have greater privacy rights than nonwhite children” (Anderson para. 17). The goal of Anderson’s article is to bring to light existing prejudices surveillance exacerbates when left unregulated and argue that although it is a seemingly quick solution to school campus issues like violence, bullying, and contraband, educators would better serve their communities by interacting with their schools’ student bodies to solve these problems at their root rather than addressing them with punitive measures

Throughout this essay I will analyse the language used in an online article from Mail Online by Richard Littlejohn, titled “Duggan was a Gangster, not Nelson Mandela”. I intend to show how young black men are criminalised in the news media and how this affects black consumer culture and perpetuates negative stereotypes. Despite the fact that the article focuses on issues in London and the United Kingdom, I will focus this discussion on the United States, as this is where racial profiling, criminalisation, and police violence is significantly

Unfortunately, society is not receiving all of the information, which has resulted in riots and the Black Lives Matter campaign. These riots are aggressive, resulting in the destruction of communities and an overall disregard for societal safety. By analyzing media coverage, this paper will reveal how the

Granted, increased security catches more student misbehavior regardless of race. Schools with drug testing, dog sniffs, and random contraband searches had an increase in suspension and arrests versus the schools that did not have these protocols. However, when these measures are put in place, black students are three times are likely to be suspended than white students. When school resource officers, who have the authority to arrest, are added in, black students are 2.2 times more likely to be arrested than their white counterparts.

A considerable amount of literature consistently argues that the way crime is portrayed in the media significantly differs from what official records and research tell us, that is to say, that the media is said to misrepresent the crime problem. Five main arguments are presented demonstrating that the media distorts the crime problem. First, the media tend to report on crimes that are considered `newsworthy.' Second, it is argued that the media's role is that of an agenda-setter. Third, media reporting on crime is supportive of law enforcement agencies but is negative towards courts. Fourth, the media reports on crime that

While they initially found that race significantly predicted the likelihood of arrest over time, they later found that race became no longer significant when school suspension was accounted. The authors admit that this result was unanticipated and suggest that the effect of school discipline on future arrest may traverse race-ethnicity, however their discussion does not go much beyond this statement (p. 20). Since their study is “the first to demonstrate the cumulative effect of school suspension on formal sanctions within the criminal justice system,” they present a finding that not only extends the literature in a consequential way, but also has important implications (p. 19). Therefore, a deeper and more thorough discussion of this finding seems

Even though, the community believes that having police involvement in schools, makes it a safer place for all students, it is not because we’re contributing to the school-to-prison-pipeline. Instead of treating students as students, we treat students as prisoners. Instead of making a comfortable learning environment for all students, we single some students out. Most students pushed into the school-to-prison-pipeline are minority, or students who have history of poverty, or students with disabilities. At Garinger, we have both students who have a history of poverty, and students with disabilities. The reason, why the dropout rate is so high is because when students are suspended, or incarcerated they get behind in their school work, which will