Media Blinders Impede a Colorblind Society
Can't we all just get along? No, says Steve Boriss -- not until the media establishment stops dividing us by race and everything else.
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“Can’t we all just get along?” That was the famous plea of Rodney King, a reluctant symbol of police brutality whose videotaped beating set off the worst riot in U.S. history.
Sixteen years later, the answer still seems to be “no,” judging by the state of race relations coverage as reported by the mainstream media. The Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama contest has degenerated into white vs. black rhetoric. A small-town controversy, “the Jena Six,” featured retro incidents involving nooses and lynchings.
Even a natural disaster — a hurricane — and the mismanagement that followed were rife with racial implications.
But I believe that yes, Mr. King, we can get along, and we will when our nation rids itself of an Old Media that refuses to let us.
It’s not that our nation’s press wants to divide America, mind you — they just can’t help it because they hold certain monolithic views.
To understand this, it is necessary to understand the premises behind left vs. right-wing thinking involving confidence in humanity’s ability to solve social ills. The Right tends to believe the world is imperfect and mankind cannot make it perfect. The Left, on the other hand, tends to believe that the world can be perfected and human beings possess almost unlimited potential to make it so.
But there is a flip side to the Left’s rosy view of mankind. Because they believe that man can solve all problems, they also believe that man causes all problems. Thus, whenever anything goes wrong, a hunt to identify who is to blame immediately ensues.
When this is practiced by the center-left news media, they invariably pigeon-hole each of us into one of the following three groups, then overtly encourage conflict among members of the following groups to resolve the problem:
The Victims: If people have problems, they are clearly victims of something they cannot control, and action must be taken to help them. For the center-left media, that’s the instinctive reaction, given their belief that all social problems are readily fixable.
However, the news media cannot treat all of us as victims, even though each of us suffers from one social disadvantage or another in our different physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and economic situations. So they have to choose some and exclude others. Their favored victims these days are blacks, women, and gays. Why? There is no easy answer, but it appears to be related more to historical themes than to the application of any particular methodology to determine relative victim-worthiness.
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4 Comments
RattlerGator:Well done!
Jan 22, 2008 - 4:13 am David Thomson:“For decades, they have been sending the message to the black community that they could not succeed on their own. When they stop getting that message, perhaps society will move closer to the colorblindness dreamed of by Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. believed in affirmative action programs. He also allowed people into his movement that encouraged blacks to perceive themselves as victims. It is most peculiar that the truth concerning MLK continues to this day when one considers the evidence that is available at your local library. It should be fairly easy to obtain a copy of The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Claiborne Carson. This collection of his writings (and those written for him by other people) will blow your mind. Revered King was a radical socialist who held America in contempt during the Vietnam War era.
Jan 22, 2008 - 8:29 am David Thomson:Clayborne Carson relased the following statement on October 27, 1996:
“Nevertheless, if others wish to speculate about King, as a historian, I am compelled to object when the abundant documentary evidence regarding his life is ignored or misused. And King’s own words and writings clearly indicate he was open to governmental programs that compensated for past wrongs. Certainly, the use of King’s oration at the 1963 March on Washington to attack affirmative action betrays a lack of historical understanding. King’s dream of a nation in which every American would be judged not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” was surely his ideal as well as the guiding principle of the civil rights movement. But the complete text of King’s speech makes clear that his dream was of a future that did not yet exist. He spoke of his dream only as an extemporaneous addition to his prepared text, which charged that America had “defaulted” on its promise to ensure “the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all citizens. He warned racial justice would be achieved only when the “whirlwinds of revolt’ shook “the foundations of our nation.”
In fact, realization of King’s “beloved community” would require a radical transformation of American society, and he argued for governmental policies that would compensate for the historical wrongs committed against African-Americans. Although the term “affirmative action” was not widely used during King’s lifetime, he advocated special programs that would enable African-Americans to enjoy equal opportunity.”
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/additional_resources/articles/mercury.htm
Please click on the link and read the whole thing. It is time we faced some unpleasant facts concerning Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jan 22, 2008 - 9:05 am tanstaafl:I agree with your premise.
You refer to media 3 different ways, Old Media, mainstream media and center-left media.
(really) Old Media (maybe when Rodney King went down media) weren’t as focused on the simplistic divisions you mention (victims, oppressors, enlightened).
The dumbing down of “media thought” and brain dead categorization and reduction into isms, racism, ageism, feminism, isms and more isms, seems to me a reasonably recent phenomenon.
And directly related to the idiot-thought dominating our public schools and those “teaching” our children, including those teaching our print journalists.
A long way of saying that so much complete and utter crap makes it into print today, it’s embarrassing.
Jan 22, 2008 - 11:04 am