Top 5 things to Consider for an Honest Conversation about Race & Policing
4. Media Hype-beasts
Situations in which we can point to racism are very attractive. This obsession is held by many of all angles; from the alt right to the pro-blacks. By default, any situation that deals with a black person being shot by law enforcement seems to result in immediate media coverage. I don’t necessarily blame the media, because so as long as people are eating it up, they have no reason to stop. They will completely ignore the cases of whites and other races that are killed unjustifiably or justifiably by cops, but latch on to the situations that involve blacks. This may make it seem as if things are happening at such an alarming rate or an abnormal rate. Again, this isn’t abnormal in terms of practice and perception. If the media reported nothing but Asian people robbing stores, it would make it seem as if Asians are robbing people more often even if the statistics showed the complete opposite.
This obsession and desire to point to racism has become dangerous. People are not even bothering to think critically and break down the statistics because they are fixated on race. Race has become THE identity. It’s rarely about the State being an institution that has a monopoly on violence, it’s about race. So as long as there is a black victim, we often act as if that’s the reason they are an actual victim. Even (which has been the case of some such as Keith Lamont Scott) the law enforcer that killed them were also black, we still pin everything on race. People don’t seem to realize how difficult it is to actually prove the racial motivations, they just automatically assume the motivations exist because there is a black victim. This highlights the dangers of allowing media outlets to dictate the conversation, and it also highlights the dangers of collectivism.
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