Fox News and conservative media has been reporting that black protesters have been hunting white citizens in retaliation for the recent police shooting, including a reporter who said in a YouTube statement that he had to leave the area in fear of being killed. The question is, if these reports are true, why there has been no hate crime reporting or Justice Department investigation. There is also a sharp conflict raised over CNN’s reporting of the statements of Sylville Smith’s sister. The sharp contrast in coverage suggests either exaggeration from one side or avoidance from another. There of course should only be one side in the reporting of news, but this is the latest example of the reason why so many mistrust the media.
The riots began after the 23-year-old Sylville Smith was shot by a black patrol officer. He was armed with a stolen gun and fled from a car during a traffic stop. The loaded gun had been stolen in an earlier burglary. Smith had reportedly an extensive criminal record. The police appear to have have body cameras so we will hopefully be able to learn more about the reason for the shooting, though the officers stated that they fired after the gun was brandished or pointed at them.
Independent journalist Tim Pool received acclaim in his coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He also has reported that whites were being hunted down. While Pool expressed sympathy with the protesters, he stated “For those that are perceivably white, it is just not safe to be here. And that’s why I’m deciding to leave.”
Fox has also shown videos of groups calling for the running down of whites seen on the streets.
None of this means that all or most of the protesters are engaging in racist retaliation. However, the sharp contrast in reporting is precisely why people increasingly view media as pursuing hidden agendas or shaping the news.
Another sharp contrast is found between the Washington Times and CNN. The Washington Times has accused CNN of editing out the words of Sylville Smith’s sister who called for attacks on the suburbs. Instead, CNN reported that she called for peace and no violence.
CNN showed Sherelle Smith telling protesters: “Don’t bring the violence here and the ignorance here.” In both broadcast and Web stories, CNN framed Smith as calling for peace. However, the Washington Times said that CNN cut away before Smith yelled” “Stop burning down shit we need in our community. Take that shit to the suburbs. Burn they shit down. We need our shit. We need our weaves. I don’t wear it. But we need it.”
That is a very different take from the CNN.com article saying that Smith “condemned violence carried out in her brother’s name, saying the community needs those businesses.” More importantly, it is also obvious news if the sister of the victim is telling people to burn down the suburbs. Reporters are not supposed to shape the news. The report it. That is news. It is also legitimate to explore the history of race tensions and segregation in Milwaukee — the underling anger that erupted into the streets. Likewise, it is obviously news if there are racist retaliatory attacks and whites being chased down streets or pulled from cars. These conflicting piece raise troubling questions of how our media has diverged over preferred narratives as opposed to fully reporting all of these elements.
PR
To the ones in the inner city, who actually are within the seat of power but removed from it, the suburbs are the comparative standard. Why? Because everyone in the inner city hopes to one day make it to the suburbs, where the houses are nicer, the neighborhoods are safer, the schools are better, that is their american dream.
It is the same coming from the country folks in relation to the city folks…. it is matter of image and of, as I said comparative standard. When the aim is to burn things down, city hall is targeted, but when the aim is to say ” why are you burning the ish of people who have nothing instead of going where they have something to lose”, the suburbs are the ones finger-pointed.
As for your friends, the mistake you make is one of rule and exception. All of us know the exception, which we use to ask, why is there such a rule when there is such an exception?
It was said before about Jews, and Irish, and Poles, and Chinese and women! If one can why can’t all?
—————————–
To all:
How many Black people live in the inner city?
How many people escape the inner city to better areas?
How many Black people fit the stereotype that Squeek is working of?
How many have successfully escaped poverty and the inner city through hard work and dedication? And how many worked just as hard but couldn’t escape their conditions?
Should we assume then the problem is less racial and more social and economic? Do we believe Blacks actually rather remain in the inner city and face a harsh life than live elsewhere and raise their kids in better conditions?
How do we then explain the poor whites in the traditionally depressed areas?
it is important we realize that this is not an issue of race. it is one of poverty first and foremost. The issue becomes racial and racist when the victim is denied the right to state her victimization, same as we do when the gay person is attacked, or the woman is raped… we, from the outside, demand to have a say in a person’s grief, and in the case of Black people, we must deny 400 years of oppressive legacy in order to make such denial.
All I can say is this, I am thankful I have not have the life and legacy that most Black people in this country had. And I am also grateful that I am not in the shoes of the sister whose brother was just gunned down.
And more importantly, I am grateful I am not in the shoes of some our friends here for whom empathy is a four letter word.
I had opportunities, I was educated, I was in good health, I was born and raised without the joug of oppression and dehumanization.
If you were ‘educated’ you’d know something of the society in which you live. You know nothing but fictions and caricatures.
And, KFC, if that still ain’t enough (though I know you won’t read anything I offered before attacking it), one more.
Ta-nehisi Coates has one utility: he can run off at the keyboard and turn in copy on time. He’s never worked as a conventional reporter and has no technae whatsoever. The editors of The Atlantic ordinarily display ‘diversity’ by doing something outside the box – like hiring Megan McArdle, who was leaven because she graduated from Penn rather than Harvard or Oxbridge. In order to add some melanin, they went outside the Ivy League and collared Coates, a Howard University dropout who’d worked for the alternative press the previous seven years. He has one subject: American blackness.
Isn’t this the country where chain gangs were established re-enslaving poor black people?
You don’t know much, do you? Chain gangs were made up of convicts. That’s why they’re in chains.
If the inner city people want to do something with the people in the suburbs, they should try to get their help, not their ire.
Transferring the municipal police department to a metropolitan force which would have the tax base to staff it properly and which would be working for politicians who have their back would be very much in order in greater Baltimore and greater St. Louis. It would require, though, that inner-city black pols relinquish control of the police. Having control is important. Accomplishing anything is not.
“they head to the seat of authority, which is expressed by the suburbs”
Suburban development consists of residential architecture and retail trade. How is that a ‘seat of authority’?
and then this, showing exactly the legacy of racial segregation that was started as federal policies.
No ‘racist housing policies’ ‘built Ferguson’. Real estate development is undertaken by businessmen who are schooled and skilled in that trade, not by ‘policies’. Suburban development is not some novelty cooked up in 1949. Cities have grown in population and in their inventory of buildings since the beginning. What changed after 1924 was the demise of municipal annexation leading to fragmentation of government. What changed during the postwar period was patterns of land use, to some degree in response to zoning and to some degree in response to the prevalence of automobiles.
As for the Federal Housing Administration, they stoked the development of a financial innovation – the 20% down 30-year mortgage – which made home ownership feasible for wage earners. Prior to this, home mortgages tended to be 5-year loans with a balloon payment at the end, which proved disastrous during the early 1930s when real interest rates went through the roof as the currency deflated. Prior to this innovation, about 40% of the households in urban areas consisted of owner-occupiers. This innovation allowed the share to rise to 65%. That benefited blacks with decent credit.
and I was never targeted by a judicial system that makes its money of targeting blacks.
Neither was the slum population of Milwaukee, except in your imagination.
And here is about our own Abu Ghraib, in Chicago
You’ve linked to a low quality red haze opinion journal that shilled for the Soviet Uniion et al during the Cold War.
That aside, the police officer in question was dismissed from the force 25 years ago.
Art, you mustn’t know what I am referring to. It is this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/homan-square
But since KFC won’t do the work, here it is horse, water, drink up:
The term ‘mass incarceration’ is a tell that the article is humbug. People who bleat about ‘mass incarceration’ object to any incarceration.
As we speak, 60% of case disposition in state and federal court incur NO prison time. None. The defendants receive probation, fines, community service, or time served. People seldom languish in county jails for very long. The mean time served therein is measured in weeks. As for the 40% who are remanded to prison, the mean time served is 30 months.
You have about 600,000 black males in prison in the United States, out of a population of 20 million black males. This isn’t damaging family life in any appreciable way; it’s a modest sliver of the black male population and is largely composed of men who are not domesticated.
People are remanded to prison because they committed serious crimes. That’s what prison is for and an intelligent and well-ordered society is not shy about using its prison capacity.
Plus, as a woman, I have a legacy, too!
1. Rape;
2. Being owned by our husbands;
3. Being denied the right to vote;
4. Being forced to have babies;
5. Not being allowed to own property;
6. Not being allowed to pursue educational and job skills.
7. Dying in large numbers in childbirth;
8. Being burned for witches.
I could go on. Sooo, can I go out and rob a guitar store, a shoe store, a liquor store, a book store, a cat toy place, etc. and get a pass??? Or, am I supposed to behave myself?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Po, links aren’t answers to the questions.
That you think so is funny, but not my problem.
Prove your claims, or don’t.
As usual, you don’t.
Po,
“We did not have a legacy of slavery
we did not have a legacy of oppression
we did not have a legacy of discrimination
…of lynching”
Saddling people with a victim ideology does nothing to help their situation. A friend of mine’s husband, who is black, grew up poor, of a broken family, yet managed to graduate from college and become successful. He does not have a victim’s perspective, nor does my other friend I mentioned earlier. Same, so-called legacy.
Po,
“they head to the seat of authority, which is expressed by the suburbs”
That is not their seat of authority. The town hall, mayor’s office, township or borough office, or such place is the authority. What the heck does the Smith family living in the suburbs have to do with it? If the inner city people want to do something with the people in the suburbs, they should try to get their help, not their ire.
@PO
Legacy. Smegacy. “Lakeesha” is making illegitimate babies in the 21st century, when free birth control is available. You want to give her a pass, and even a $$$ raise for the next one! You do not know what you are talking about. Try to think new thoughts!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EFNLZ6Ug04
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
*without batting an eye…
@Po
Maybe you need to move back to the poor inner city neighborhoods/prisons sooo that you can add some much needed diversity! I can try to get you a great deal on steel security bars so you can secure your home from the KKK and white Republicans who will otherwise try to break in and steal your stuff, and entertain your family with their crazy antics!
C’mon dude, you just told us how you got ahead. Why don’t you think blacks can do the same thing if they want? Milwaukee blacks have an 82% illegitimate birth rate. That’s not an “Ooops the condom broke!” thingy. That’s just plain old not giving a hoot.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I already answered that question, Squeek. You and I had something most Blacks do not have:
We did not have a legacy of slavery
we did not have a legacy of oppression
we did not have a legacy of discrimination
…of lynching
…of dispossession.
…of social/ federal policies telling us where we could not eat, drink, live, work…and whom we couldn’t marry.
We were not experimented on… nor told we could not ride a certain bus…
We had an education and we went to school with a full belly, and were able to walk home without going through a gauntlet of crime and poverty…
Our homes were not plastered with lead, and if they were, a complaint would take care of it.
We weren’t not raised by a tired mother working 2 jobs while our father was rotting in prison for a crime he was forced to admit but was innocent of.
We were not imprisoned for using/selling pot when whites who committed the same crimes in greater numbers got off.
And when we were released after years in prison, we were not denied employment, benefits, voting rights, lodging and were not re-imprisoned for nothing more than the whim of cops.
Isn’t this the country where chain gangs were established re-enslaving poor black people?
Isn’t this the same country where the biggest city in the nation, NYC, could target people based on their skin tone in a stop and search movement that had to go to court to be found illegal?
Isn’t this the same country where cops murder unarmed black citizens with batting an eye? And where a legally armed black man is murdered without cause?
The same country where major cities’ police departments were circulating emails denigrating Black people?
I don’t know, man, there is a LOT of explaining going on for a behavior that is immoral and racist by ANY standard.
Troubling, on many levels.
Paul, he doesn’t go there because he could care less! Marthas Vinyrd is where the beautiful rich liberals are. And when he’s on vacation there CEO’S from the Fortune 500 come to call.
and then this, showing exactly the legacy of racial segregation that was started as federal policies.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/the-racist-housing-policies-that-built-ferguson/381595/