084930973
#5648By Lynn Gary Newton on Wednesday, May 19, 2004 - 1:42 am

Lynn Newton II
San Francisco State BLS 214
April 14, 2004


Suspect is a Black Male

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress
of grievances. United States Constitution: First Amendment The
previous statement is of course from the Bill of Rights in the U.S
Constitution. In all actuality the amendment should be rewritten to
say that the media can and shall seek to make as much money as
humanly possible. The truth is that our entire society is predicated on
that one precept, that everyone should seek (and usually does) the
Almighty Dollar. Unfortunately that chase has yielded some
unexpected or possibly expected side effects. The media plays a
large role in the level of violence that persists in the United States
today. In the perpetual effort to accumulate wealth, media
corporations have reached a point in which they are doing more harm
than good. They are not only increasing the level of violence, but also
seeing to it that the violence that exists, affects everyone.
In his Oscar winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine",
filmmaker Michael Moore makes the assertion that the news media
establishment makes an effort to essentially force people into living a
life based upon fear. He points out that not a single edition of the
nightly news will air that does not have multiple mentions of, and
stories on, violent crimes during the day. Although truthfully the news
media constantly display not only coverage of the current days
violence, but constant coverage of the ongoing trials and manhunts
surrounding past violent acts. The number one answer media
executives and editors-in-chief give for the constant bombardment
of violence on television and in the papers, is of course, Its what
the people want to see. The truth of the matter is that the goal of all
news mediums in America is to make money, and when it comes to
the media, nothing sells like death and destruction. Nothing grips
quite like fear and anxiety. Even still the greatest problem with the
violence shown in the media is not the amount that is shown, but the
manner in which it is shown.

Perhaps the most used and most important buzzword in the news
media industry is spin. Spin is essentially the act of taking a story
and deciding how best to display the information, with the intention
of increasing ratings and/or leaving the public with the desired notion
of the particular story. For example, while an objective and granted,
dry article might begin. At midnight on January 3, 2004 John
Charisma Doe died from wounds inflicted by a knife, a truly juicy
article with the proper amount of spin would likely read, Last
night at midnight an innocent young man was gunned down on the
corner of 62nd Ave and MacArthur Boulevard, just two blocks from an
elementary school where children were playing only hours before.
Ostensibly the idea is to capture the reader's attention and maintain
interest throughout the article. Realistically, however, Michael
Moores
observation deserves some consideration in examining the medias
propensity for spinning violence.

Professor Barry Glassner, author of The Culture Of Fear, points out
that while all (rather, nearly all) stories of violence in the news are
true, they [media executives] are very selective in what they show.
It may sound trite, but the news is rife with stories on the notorious
black male who is a possible danger to citizens. The resulting
effect is that when people watch the news and see all of the violence
associated with blacks and black males in particular, they believe that
the violence to be representative of the entire race of African-
Americans. Nearly every black man I know has had his own
experience in which a white lady walked clear across the street to
avoid passing him by. Even more still have felt the shame of watching
the lady who tensed visibly at his approach and promptly left her seat
to stand after he made use of the vacant seat next to her. It's
imperative to understand that this phenomena of seeing and
believing the spooky black man myth does not affect only old
white women, but everyone who watches it including young black
males.
As a black male myself, I can state from experience that the notion
that black men are somehow naturally bad is a belief that sits in the
subconscious of most African-American men. To be bombarded with
the ever-present idea that you are somehow genetically pre-disposed
to violence can lead to a brother, consciously or unconsciously,
stepping into the role that was laid out for him.

Psychological studies on group interaction and facilitation have
revealed the fact that in most situations people have a tendency to
put themselves into the roles that have been provided for them by
others in the group. In essence, people, more often than not, will
live up to expectations. (Forsyth 2003) This effect of group dynamics
is somewhat of a double-edged sword, and while it can be good in
some circumstances, with respect to our current discussion it is quite
terrible.

During my final high school years I found myself more and more
taking my cues from other people. If I was in a store and someone
began to follow me as we brothers know store employees are wont
to do, I would begin to act more suspicious just to make them think
they were doing something. I say more suspicious because my being
a black male already made me, by definition it seems, suspicious. I
can recall times when my buddies from the neighborhood and I would
be standing in front of the local store and instruct white people, and
Asians, entering the store to give us money. We never actually needed
money, but we would make them give us some just because we knew
that they were scared and they would give it to us. I say we made
them give us money, but in truth we would never have done anything
to someone who had refused. I guess you could say our reputation
that of the dangerous young black male preceded us. We would
always crack jokes and pat ourselves on the back for so expertly
exploiting the fears of the crackers as we called them. The truth of
it, however, is that inside we were all a bit hurt by the fact that people
to whom we meant no harm could be so obviously shaken just by our
presence. To have a person fear you as one fears a wild animal is not
a pleasant feeling. It is a dirty, shameful feeling that quickly leads to
rage at not understanding why you are being misunderstood. Our
demands for money were, more than anything else, attempts to
gain
some semblance of control over a situation we could little understand
at the time. Ultimately our actions served to only strengthen the
preconceived notions held by these people whose only crime was to
believe what the evening news told them. Most brothers however do
not often get their self-images from the nightly News at 6, but
rather from the latest episode of 106 and Park a music video show
on BET.

Just as harmful as the images of blacks committing acts of violence
displayed in the news media, are the images displayed on the music
videos that many African- American youth, and adults, watch today.
Frankly, it's not just African-Americans that are watching the videos;
as we all know, blacks essentially set the standard for every other
race in America with respect to music and entertainment. What we are
left with is a situation in which many people not just blacks see
videos portraying violence and crime within the black community,
then turn to the news and see a supposedly factual and unbiased
account of precisely what they saw on MTV and BET. This constant
reinforcement of a popular stereotype that blacks are naturally
violent and dangerous continues a vicious cycle that prevents many
people from making sound judgments concerning the validity of this
prevalent myth. Any given day one can channel surf and see on the
latest 50 cent video the same portrayal of violence that he just passed
on CNN. The best selling albums among the rap genre are those that
promote and even applaud acts of violence and the criminal lifestyle. I
try very hard to be a consciously aware person and to set a good
example for my four year old daughter, but even I have to resist the
urge to change the station at the first mention a positive message in a
song. Despite my knowledge of how devastating the media images of
blacks as uneducated, be-bopping fools can be, I am still affected by
my learned notion that if a song is about anything positive, it's got
to be a weak song. The difference between numbers of records sold
by rappers such as 50 cent and Snoop Dogg, and the numbers of
records sold by artists like Talib Kweli a positive, pro-black unity
rapper and Black Eyed Peas, is a testimony to the fact that I am not
alone in my learned bias. This begs the question: why should the
majority of an entire generation of an entire race feel that being
positive is bad and things such as pimping and gangbanging are
good?

I began my studies at San Francisco State University in August of
2001. Prior to my enrollment at SFSU I spent two years on a level-
three yard at Folsom State Prison. I was well cared for at home. Yet,
fascinated by the life portrayed in movies, videos, and indeed in my
own neighborhood, I chose to shuck work and sell crack. A year or so
of the high life and I found myself standing in front of the judge
awaiting sentencing seemingly right were I belonged. I left Solano
County Jail on a California Department of Corrections bus with two
drug convictions and a firearm conviction at the age of eighteen. I
returned home with a brand new title violent offender. I was one
month away from my 21st birthday when I was released. I went to
prison a teenager with a drug charge, I came home a "threat to
society" I even had my own convict-sitter (read, parole officer) to
come and check up on me to ensure that I was behaving like a good
little felon should. I got released feeling like a new man, a few months
of parole swiftly returned me to my rightful nigga place. What is
most distressing is the fact that, initially, I did not view the prison
sentence as a monumental event. When the judge spoke the words
sentencing me to the Department of Corrections, I didn't cry, I
didn't shout, I wasn't even angry. This complete acceptance of the
inevitability of my incarceration is astonishing to me, even as I
write this. Unfortunately, many young black men live with the
wholehearted belief that they will one day be incarcerated, or shot, or
have to shoot someone else.

Prison has become something of a rite of initiation in
many urban areas. For example, in my own state of California, 9.3% of
all adult black men, ages 18 to 64, are incarcerated essentially one
out of every 10. (Human Rights Watch Press Backgrounder 2002)
Sadly enough, this familiarity is not limited to the justice system.
African-American males and African-American people in general, are
becoming increasingly familiar with, and accepting of, those actions
that are sending us to prison. Shootings in the neighborhood are
becoming less and less traumatic, to the point of seeming normal.
When I was shot in the leg in 1998, following an altercation with
another of my black brothers, I took a bullet with the ease of taking
an allergy pill. My life didnÕt flash before my eyes. I didn't have a life
changing epiphany. In fact, after I was released from the hospital, I
returned that very night to the drug turf I called my own, crutches and
all. For everyone in my family, the incident was just that, an incident.
It was as though nearly everyone expected me to one-day get shot. I
can even recall my cousin saying, "You got your stripes now. You got
a war wound." Looking back, my own nonchalance surrounding the
shooting puts a knot at the center of my stomach. How can anyone
see getting shot as a normal occurrence? As unexplainable as it
seems, I sometimes have to be reminded by my cousin that I was even
shot. Helping to promote this general acceptance of violence as
common is the news media with the constant coverage, and rappers
the spokespeople of black America with their embrace of the street
life. I acknowledge that rappers and entertainers do truly speak of
what they see in everyday life, but at what point does it become the
cause rather than the commentary. At what point does the media end
its reporting and begin its creating of the news. I am the first person
to say that my being in prison was of my own doing, and accept full
responsibility for the actions that got me there. Yet as I walk down
International Boulevard in Oakland and see dozens of brothers living
up to the roles placed on them by society and primarily the media, I
can't help but wonder just how much of a choice they actually had.

"Police are on the lookout for a black male suspected of ......" Go
ahead and complete the sentence with whatever crime you choose.
Chances are, you've heard it on the evening news at one time or
another--likely as often as you watch the news. For those who
happen to be from a suburban area and have little contact with many
African-Americans, then their perception of blacks is only
strengthened by the videos in which they see young black males
waving tech nines while rapping about robbing the next nigga wit
a chain. Even more credibility is given to their conceptions about
blacks when, riding on the BART train, they see black teenagers on
the way to school looking like carbon copies of the men they just saw
on MTV. Thanks to the media today, we are faced with a sort of
chicken and egg paradox, in which violent acts are committed and
then reported on, with the proper spin, by the news media, and
extolled by the entertainment media; leading, in turn, to more violent
acts being committed, and more people becoming frightened of that
oh so dangerous black male. The cycle has been going on for too
long for any of us to determine which came first the excessive
violence in media, or the excessive violence in life. Yet, what is certain
is that as long as the next generation is continuing to be fed this idea
of a big, bad, dangerous world, that generation will inevitably see that
big, bad world manifest. They will inevitably become that world.


Annotated Bibliography

Kennedy, D.M., M.H. Moore, M. Sparrow. Beyond 911: A new era for
policing. New
York: Basic Books 1990
This book is about policing in urban settings. I will use this source
primarily for examples of racial profiling and the mentality that leads
to it.

Johnson, Eric A., Eric H. Monhoken. The Civilization of Crime: Violence
in town and country since the Middle Ages. Urbana, University of
Illinois Press.
1996
This book looks at all sorts of violence, government sanctioned and
criminal. I will use this book to show a pattern of violence throughout
the world and primarily in areas of European influence.

Nieto, Marcus, Roger Dunstan, Gus A. Koehler. ÒFirearm-related
Violence in California:
incidence and economic costsÓ. Sacramento, CA California Research
Bureau 1994
This is a report I found in the library that basically goes over all of the
statistics regarding violence with guns in the state. This will be useful
for statistics from pre- Õ94 while I have a source for current statistics
as well.

Pallone, Nathaniel J. Race, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation: Violent Crime:
The Realities and
the Myths. New York Hawthorne Press 1997
Looks at various stereotypes surrounding violent crime and attempts
to remove some of the falsehoods regarding race and criminal
activity. This source helps to point out the fact that violence is not
limited to young black males.

Egendorf, Laura K. School Shootings. San Diego, CA Greenhaven Press
2002
This book looks at the issues of bullying and peer pressure in
situations like Columbine and other school shootings. I will use this
partly to point out that violence extends beyond the urban society
and also to point to some driving factors behind violence among
youth.

U.S. Department of Justice Statistics on violent crime. [Online]
Available
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict.htm March 15, 2004
This is the Department of JusticeÕs online statistics site for crime etc.
I will be using this for statistics verification on murder rates etc.