{"id":139936,"date":"2014-10-01T17:08:43","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T17:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=139936"},"modified":"2014-10-01T17:08:43","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T17:08:43","slug":"michael-brown-father-will-ferguson-shift-media-ideas-fixing-black-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/michael-brown-father-will-ferguson-shift-media-ideas-fixing-black-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Brown Had a Father – But will Ferguson shift media ideas on \u2018fixing\u2019 black men?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janine Jackson<\/em><\/p>\n

Any effort to improve<\/strong> the lives of black men that meets with the hearty approval of Bill O\u2019Reilly ought to set off a few alarm bells. But My Brother\u2019s Keeper, an initiative announced by Barack Obama in February, was received benignly by the corporate press, with the closest thing to criticism being \u201cShould he have acted earlier?\u201d (ABC This Week<\/strong>, 3\/2\/14<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Reports displayed a telling vagueness. MBK was described as \u201ca program aimed at giving young men of color a shot at success\u201d (NBC Nightly News<\/strong>, 2\/27\/14<\/a>), an effort \u201cto reverse underachievement among young black and Hispanic males\u201d (AP<\/strong>, 2\/27\/14<\/a>) and as \u201ccommitments from foundations and businesses to help keep young minority men in the classroom and out of prison\u201d (Washington Post<\/strong>, 2\/28\/14<\/a>). ABC<\/strong>\u2019s Diane Sawyer (2\/27\/14<\/a>) called it \u201ca plan to help kids succeed, even when they\u2019re angry and have made mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serious sounds were made about the problem George Stephanopoulos (This Week<\/strong>, 3\/2\/14<\/a>) presented as \u201cthe fact that young black men are more likely than other Americans to drop out of school, be sent to prison or end up murdered,\u201d but with little interest in ascertaining just how MBK, with its focus on mentoring, or \u201chigh standards and up-close motivation\u201d (CBS Evening News<\/strong>, 2\/27\/14<\/a>), would address it.<\/p>\n

Myriad deeper questions<\/strong> were left to big media\u2019s margins. USA Today<\/strong>(3\/3\/14<\/a>) ran Tavis Smiley\u2019s critique that \u201cwhat these young brothers really need is not so much to be \u2018kept,\u2019 but to have their humanity and dignity respected.\u201d AChicago Tribune<\/strong> source (2\/28\/14<\/a>) likened the plan to \u201ca band-aid on a gunshot wound.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/strong> (3\/12\/14<\/a>) noted such core concerns as MBK\u2019s exclusion of women and girls, its reinforcement of patriarchal norms and its reliance on philanthropic noblesse oblige over government action, but consigned them to its \u201cRoom for Debate\u201d feature.<\/p>\n

Independent media gave critics more space. The Nation<\/strong>\u2019s Mychal Denzel Smith (2\/28\/14<\/a>), for example, suggested that despite some admirable aspects, MBK<\/p>\n

ignores the root problem. We can turn every black and brown boy into a \u201crespectable\u201d citizen. But the moment we do, the rules for what constitutes \u201crespectable\u201d will change. That\u2019s how racism works.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At Salon<\/strong> (3\/6\/14<\/a>), Brittney Cooper called out the proposal\u2019s male-only focus, given that black women and girls fare as poorly and even worse in some ways, including the fact that \u201csingle black women have the lowest net wealth of any group, with research showing a median wealth of $100.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not surprising<\/strong> that corporate reporters, in the main, saw little to question in the idea that entrenched socio-economic disparities could be meaningfully addressed without systemic change or even new resources, that the fundamental problem facing men of color is \u201cbroken\u201d families in need of a dominant male, and that a proper point of emphasis is that, as Brian Williams (NBC Nightly News<\/strong>, 2\/27\/14<\/a>) explained, \u201cthey cannot blame the circumstances of their birth.\u201d<\/p>\n

These media have a long, inglorious history of singling out black males as \u201csuperpredators\u201d (Extra!<\/strong>, 1\/98<\/a>) and shiftless grifters, and in some ways the \u201cuniquely endangered\u201d black male is a variant rather than an antidote to that pathological depiction. The narrative may start by talking about \u201churdles\u201d black men face, but on examination it generally locates those obstacles within black men themselves, including those who, as Stephanopoulos put it, \u201cend up murdered.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Michael Brown<\/strong>\u2013with a father in his life and accepted to college\u2013was shot dead in the street in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer, corporate media had a chance to revisit the assumption that what black men need most is a mentor. But rather than question the analysis they\u2019d embraced, media instead found everything \u201cnew.\u201d Suddenly we learned that US police forces are militarized<\/a>! Some police disrespect black people! Different communities have different experiences!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to belittle media coverage, which was better than it might have been. There was the predictable culture-blaming, from the predictable quarters. (See MBK booster Bill O\u2019Reilly\u20138\/26\/14<\/a>\u2013who dismissed protesters\u2019 concerns because the idea of white privilege is a \u201cbig lie,\u201d expounded by \u201crace hustlers.\u201d) But when you can find a column headlined \u201cIn Defense of Looting\u201d in the Daily Mississippian<\/strong> (8\/26\/14<\/a>), you know it\u2019s not quite business as usual.<\/p>\n

USA Today<\/strong> (8\/15\/14<\/a>) reported on the incidence of killings by police (at least 400 a year) and decried the lack of reliable data. The Christian Science Monitor<\/strong> (8\/21\/14<\/a>) explored the damage inflicted by St. Louis segregation and white flight. The New Republic<\/strong> (8\/20\/14<\/a>) explained the particulars of \u201cself defense\u201d laws in Missouri and elsewhere that, combined with \u201centrenched racial and occupational biases\u201d make homicide convictions of police officers like Ferguson\u2019s Darren Wilson \u201cbasically impossible.\u201d All of this helpfully moves the conversation from black people\u2019s \u201cfeelings\u201d to demonstrable facts.<\/p>\n

But big media<\/strong> don\u2019t really have themselves to credit for the elevation of Brown\u2019s murder beyond lamentable anecdote. They were largely reacting to the vigorous public outcry, and to the Ferguson Police Department\u2019s especially heavy-handed response, including assaults on reporters themselves. And they were struggling to keep up, as those following the story turned instead to Black Twitter and other online sources for news and perspective. (CounterSpin<\/strong>,8\/22\/14<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Now mainstream media are asking whether Ferguson will be a \u201cmoment\u201d or a \u201cmovement\u201d for black activists, but they might more appropriately ask the same of their own engagement with the issues Ferguson puts on the table. As Salon<\/strong>\u2019s Cooper (8\/26\/14<\/a>) put it, real progress would entail<\/p>\n

a real commitment to due process, protection of voting rights, a livable wage, the dissolution of the prison\/industrial complex, funding of good public education at both K-12 and college levels, a serious commitment to affirmative action, food security and full reproductive justice for all women. Those are the kinds of conditions under which black communities, and all communities, could thrive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A failure to see things on that scale, to treat what we\u2019re now calling \u201cFerguson\u201d not as aberrant but as reflective of US social systems and institutions, risks setting us back to appeals to individual betterment, the \u201cpull up your pants\u201d logic critics see in MBK.<\/p>\n

And not insignificantly<\/strong>, a focus on the individual over the structural tells white people that racism is a personal thing they \u201cjust don\u2019t understand\u201d and therefore can\u2019t fight, that progress is a zero-sum game in which there\u2019s nothing people of conscience can do together. Recognition of the irreducibility (beyond class, culture, clothing or family structure) of anti-black racism is laudable and overdue. But it need not erase the non-black anti-racists who could be engaged in resisting policies and practices that overwhelmingly hurt people of color, like, for just one example, the practice of funding police departments with low-level warrants that target the poor\u2013as spotlighted by the Daily Beast<\/strong>\u2019s Michael Daly (8\/22\/14<\/a>), who is white.<\/p>\n

Ferguson could be a turning point for media coverage of racism. But should corporate media \u201cforget\u201d what they now suggest they are learning\u2013as they have after previous \u201cmoments\u201d (Extra!<\/strong>, 7\/92<\/a>, 8\/06<\/a>) the good news is that every day more people are talking around them, and moving forward without them.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janine Jackson Any effort to improve the lives of black men that meets with the hearty approval of Bill O\u2019Reilly ought to set off a few alarm bells. But My Brother\u2019s Keeper, an initiative announced by Barack Obama in February, was received benignly by the corporate press, with the closest thing to criticism being \u201cShould […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-139936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}