Off the record: "Good" Criminals vs "Bad" Civilians

Today in class, I had several things to say about the Boston Marathon bomber, the way he was perceived by the media, his "fan club," and the way representation works in the media, but honestly, if I had started, I don't know if I could have come off of my soapbox in a timely fashion. Jahar Tsarnaev, or the Boston Marathon bomber, received a cover story in Rolling Stone magazine and county wide sympathy despite the fact that his actions lead to the deaths, injuries, and property damage. Although his guilt is apparent, there was (and possibly still is) a group of people, whom Marcotte referred to as "mostly young women" when referring to the demographic, that believes he is innocent. Jahar Tsarnaev has been treated with the utmost care by the media, maintaining that he committed the crime, but almost appearing to draw sympathy from viewers and readers for this poor, misguided soul. Now you may be asking why exactly this would rile me up, or you already know.

Let's take Michael Brown, a teenager (not an adult as he is often referred to as in the media) that was murdered in Fergueson, Missouri. On the day he was killed, his body was left on the street for hours before it was finally picked up. He didn't get a cover story, we didn't get a sappy slide show of his life (from the media anyway), what we got was a slanderous campaign highlighting all of the mistakes and ill-advised pictures (for a black man anyway) that he had taken over the course of his life. The people of Fergueson were rightfully angry that this young man was shot dead, so how did the police respond? With tanks, tear gas, and assorted military equipment that they shouldn't have in the first place, but that's another topic for another blog post. How was that handled by the media? They focused on the looters and degenerates, not the pain felt by a community that had been mistreated for long enough. The media, run by the hegemonic powers that be, intends to keep the score where it is.

People to this day hesitate to call Jahar Tsarnaev a terrorist, but Michael Brown and so many like him were immediately branded "thugs" by the media. I'll even go so far as to say that "thug" is what people say when they truly wish they could say "nigger." Race and appearance still control so much today, so much so that a convicted terrorist could have a fan club cheering for his release despite the people he hurt, and a young man could lay dead in his coffin, murdered, while people still continue to defame his name and justify his death. I said in class that American society is "shallow," which is true because we all place too much faith on appearances, but very few of us are willing to address the elephant in the room. Black has become associated with violence and crime for as long as this country has stood, but any mention of it and we're playing the race card, or bringing race into things when we shouldn't. Silence and inaction promote the status quo, it promotes cover shots and sob stories for lighter skinned criminals, it promotes the slander and hatred for black civilians, and until the very obvious race problem in the media is addressed, things will stay the same. In the end, that's just the way they want it.