Discourse On Racial Injustice

Media in Relation to the Exposure of, and Discourse on Racial Injustice

========================

1. Balkaran, S. (1999). Mass Media and Racism. The Yale Political Quarterly, 21(1). Retrieved from http://www.yale.edu/ypq/articles/oct99/oct99b.html

========================

This article discusses some of the social and historical underpinnings of racism in the United States. But the author also gives special consideration to the role of conventional news media in not only understanding these racial underpinnings, but in facilitating an effective, public dialogue about them. As it stands, news media has not been used this way, as Balkaran contends. Instead, news media has done a great deal more to reify harmful stereotypes about African Americans,

If we are to increase people’s exposure to the wrongful murders of innocent black Americans (whether by police or other civilians), we have to bear in mind the medium through which we do it. How well can we entrust a media which has given a mostly harmful, narrow representation of minority communities to be competent enough to not only present images of those unjustly slain, but to facilitate any social dialogue, or change in social consciousness, about the injustices they depict? Will media help or hinder that process? This article provides a great deal of information to consider, in that

He writes that when a particularly noteworthy story of this kind appears, major media tends to go to work to sensationalize or only focus on the most dramatic aspects of the story. It does not necessarily help contribute to any real social change on the matter, though it may trumpet, if not merely cater those who trumpet, the chants of “black lives matter.” As Zheng notes, “...None of this incessant and often repetitive dialogue has truly led to change and improvement of our society. The media simply creates sensationalism, and not sensibility; the mainstream media is more concerned with headlines than actual issues (Zheng, 2014).”