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Janks and Deconstruction

One of the biggest take-aways that I had from the Jank’s reading was the importance of design and re-design in advertising. While my thoughts are still a bit scattered, I do want to say that Janks’ assessment that every “design serves a different set of interests” is one of the key features that informs my understanding (Janks 183). Janks’ point is that all advertisements show some sign of bias. Even in her example with the LEGO figures, which depicts a positive reasoning for opening up U.S. borders to refugees, still represents a form of bias (Janks 182). The bias in this case is just a positive representation of an open border policy that I myself might agree with. The thing that struck me was that I often view ads that I agree with as having little to no bias. Janks explains that “no design is neutral”, and that once a design has been constructed it still must face some form of deconstruction (Janks 183). From my group conversation in class, I recognized that I was much harsher on the childhood obesity ad (the ad that my group analyzed) than the LEGO ad in Janks’ book. That’s not to say that my deconstruction of the LEGO article needed to reflect the harshness of my criticism of the childhood obesity article (it would be weird to force myself to disagree with policies that I believe are true), but I do believe that Janks is making the point that we should all be cognizant of the media that we are consuming. As Janks mentions, “each redesign becomes a new text that requires deconstruction” (Janks 183). Without this deconstruction we become complacent in the design of the advertisement.

When I was in class, I started thinking about just how important it is for students to be able to analyze bias. Even in my own education, I learned how to analyze bias in a text from an early age, but I only learned how to analyze bias in advertisement that I didn’t agree with. In no way do I believe that I grew up in an echo chamber, but I do believe that my schooling may have geared me to only look at certain types of bias. If I am to become a great teacher someday, I realize that I need to be prepared to teach students how to handle diagnosing all forms of bias, even bias in advertisements or works that I might personally agree with. However, I do not see schooling as a non-political zone, and I’m not sure that Janks’ intention is for me to be neutral at all. On page 184, Janks mentions a poem that her students in South Africa had to read about a father that demands his child to keep going back and forth from the kitchen to the table to get things for dinner (Janks 184). Janks notes that, when her students in South Africa read the poem, the stated that their home life wasn’t like the one they described. They did not live in a nuclear family like the Eurocentric poem depicted. By asking students in South Africa to read and analyze the poem, Janks explained that the school was providing the students with literature that was inaccessible to them, but without deconstructing the poem the school would never have known. I believe that redesign and deconstruction serve the purpose of helping us check our own biases. As a teacher, I will have to be political, but I will need to make sure that what I am saying is always relevant to the students I am teaching. If not, I will need to deconstruct my own thinking, so that my teaching can be relevant to my students.  

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Janks and Design Orientation

From the readings, I was most interested in Janks’ ideas that there are orientations to literacy that shape the ways we interact with literacy. Janks starts her section on literacy orientation by explaining that she is interested in understanding “approaches to literacy and language that take power seriously” (Janks, 2010, 23). For Janks, orientations to literacy explore the different was that certain approaches perpetuate privilege for some people while at the same time oppressing others. Janks notes that this happens through curriculum, preferred methods of teaching, and even what books are put into the syllabus (Janks, 2010, 23). As a person that wants to be a teacher, I’m very concerned with making sure my curriculum is culturally responsive. I would like my curriculum to both be accessible for my students and include authors that represent their background. In my own education, I don’t recall having teachers that actively tried to advocate for books with characters that looked like me, and it is important for me to provide that opportunity for my future students. I think that’s why I like the “design orientation” so much. Janks defines the design orientation to literacy as “productive power”, and that it’s the “ability to harness the multiplicity of semiotic systems across diverse cultural locations (Janks, 2010, 25). One of the things that I love about this approach is that it acknowledges the individual humanity of each student. If Paulo Friere’s theories are about creating a pedagogy to work “with” the oppressed, then Janks’ thoughts on design orientation are the practical implementation on those theories. Janks asserts that design orientation does more than just acknowledge a student’s cultural location, but also seeks to find ways to destroy systemic issues that may be oppressive to that student. In class, we had a discussion on code-switching, and while code-switching is not something that should be necessary, in some situations it is. In my mind, design orientation would teach students about code-switching (what it is and when to use it), but it will also teach students how to fight the current power structures that uphold an Anglo-American way of speaking as the dominant form of vernacular. For me, it seems wrong to not teach my students how to adapt to oppressive system. Those systems are real and are always affecting my students. However, I don’t want to only teach them to conform to the ways of the oppressors because then I would be the one furthering oppression. Instead, design theory chooses to acknowledge that there are oppressive systems, but it also teaches students how to undermine those systems. Janks asserts that design orientation is able to prepare students to undermine systems by working in “multiliteracies” that allow students to “select from all the available semiotic resources” to fulfill their educational needs (Janks, 2010, 25). Janks states that these multiliteracies are supported by using a “range of media and technologies” (Janks, 2010, 25). These media and technologies represent a diverse set of literacies and literary practices, and Janks makes it clear that it is this diversity that allows students find their own approach to dealing with literacy, both oppressive and liberating. However, it’s not just media and technology. It’s the application of those resources along with the framing of undermining oppression that makes design orientation so effective. For my classroom, I want to make sure that my students feel like my curriculum has representations of themselves, but also want them to know the dangers of living in an oppressive system. But most importantly, I would want them to understand that they have the agency to fight oppression.

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Love in the Classroom

In Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire introduces the concept of love as “dialogical”. Freire explains that love is both “the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself” (Freire, 2017, 89). The contention here is that conversations, even those between the oppressed and the oppressors, must contain love to be considered a dialogue. Without love, there is just empty speech between two parties and no critical dialogue going on. I really like this idea because it connects really well to Freire’s other thoughts on Sectarianism. In class, we talked about how sectarians are unable to change the world around them because they are trapped within their own “circle of certainty” (Jones 2018). While within our circle of certainty we see everything we believe as objectively true, but we miss what Freire considers to be reality: a way of viewing the world that allows us to transform it (Freire, 2017, 39). As a person who wants to be a teacher, I have realized that I need to step out of my own sectarian views if I want to be successful in the classroom. Though Freire doesn’t mention it, for teachers, existing in a circle of certainty breeds oppression. Students who have diverse opinions and viewpoints should be heard. However, I still struggle understanding what to do when a student has an opinion much different to my own, or an opinion that I believe is harmful to other students in my class. For instance, over the summer I taught at Breakthrough in Boston. We were having a discussion about Claudette Colvin and the Civil Rights movement when one of my students mentioned that Claudette deserved to be kicked out of the NAACP because she got pregnant. My entire room went silent. Students froze and looked to me for answers. I had no idea what to say in that moment. It was clearly a sexist comment, but I had no training dealing with the situation. I decided to have my students do a silent write for thirty seconds about what had just been said, and then I had them share what they had written with the class. We were having such a good discussion, and I didn’t want it to end because of what someone had just said. However, my mind was still reeling from what had just occurred, and I forgot to talk with my students to see if people were still alright mentally. I knew that many of my students had sisters who had left high school because of teenage pregnancy, and it was potentially a hot button issue. I feel like I failed my students at that moment because I didn’t know what to do. At the same time, I wanted to embrace all my students with love, including my student who had made the remarks. I didn’t want to be authoritarian and shut him down, but at the same time I realized that what he said was potentially harmful to my other students. I tried my best to use an approach that wouldn’t put anyone on the spot, and treat each answer given with a touch of warmth and love but even that was hard. Unwittingly, I had left room for other students to agree with the sexist remarks, and our class soon devolved into a discussion on teenage pregnancy. I could feel some of my students getting uncomfortable with the situation, so I forcefully changed the topic. I’m not sure if that was the right move either. I think that it’s hard to approach every situation with love, especially if you put yourself at risk of validating sexist, racist, or homophobic remarks. I don’t know if Freire gives us the tools to deal with these situations.

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Critical Literacy-Nick Foulon

One of the things that I loved about the Janks reading was the idea that one can become literate in a subject. Janks claims that literacies represent a “set of cognitive skills and a set of practices” (Janks PNG). While many interpret literacy to imply an ability to read, Janks asserts that being literate in an area represents could mean being able to read, but also should include an ability to interpret symbols, realize relationships between words of symbols, and an ability to synthesize processes to make meaning (Janks PNG). In this regard, literacy represents all of the complexities of understanding a topic or area and being literate in certain subjects is definitely associated with power. In the middle of chapter 1, Janks explains that children who grow up in oral traditions develop different, but equally powerful, facilities with language (Janks PNG). However, school systems tend to value the written successes of privilege middle class literacy norms (Janks PNG). The students who grow up in the oral tradition face the task of becoming literate in a written tradition that they may not have access to at their house. I know that as a child I was lucky because I had many books growing up. For my birthday I would ask for Magic Tree House books, and I would read them to my brother. I grew both my written and oral literacies this way, and I think that my access to books shaped my ability to be successful as both a reader and a writer in my elementary years. Janks’ analysis explains that, while it is difficult to build the knowledge for a literacy, that is the point of being literate. In the middle of chapter one, Janks asserts that “literacy development is ongoing” (Janks PNG). Everyone encounters new literacies every day, and while some individuals are given great advantage due to privilege, many people will still struggle to grapple with the complex symbols, phrases, or relationships that are part of any difficult literacy. For me, that literacy is social media. I’m a recruiter for Breakthrough Teaching Collaborative (honestly a great program and one of the main reasons that I want to teach). Breakthrough requires me to have recruitment events on campus, and I organize them entirely through social media. I constantly have to take-down, re-upload, or delete my posts on both Facebook and Twitter because I lack the skills necessary to post my work in an area where the greatest amount of people can see it. Though I struggle with my illiteracy in social media, I have come to realize that my barrier for that literacy is relatively low, and I only need to spend more time writing posts and studying the Facebook interface. Other literacies are much more complex, and some have extreme barriers to entry that involve oppression and identity politics based on race, class, gender, or sexuality. While I have a harder time understanding and accepting all of the nuances in James Gee’s theories on discourses (which is also the reason I favored analyzing Janks’ literacies for this response), I do believe that Gee offers a good explanation that groups often provide I high barrier to entry for a literacy/discourse in order to “protect their social goods” (Gee 529). While Gee is speaking about discourses, which are usually associated with particular ways of speaking or actions between individuals who are part of a group, this idea still applies to literacies which represent more than just person to person interactions. While I may be illiterate in Facebook, as Janks mentioned in her work, there are a lot of components at play in being Facebook literate, and many of those components are routed in privileges. For example, before you can be Facebook literate, you must be computer literate, which would require you to have access to a computer. You must be reading and writing literate, and you must be literate in using Google. These are all literacies that I may not even know that I have, but after seeing my mother struggle to create a Facebook account a year ago, I recognize that these literacies act as barriers of entry for people who have not had access to schools or computer technologies. This realization is one of the main takeaways that I had from the Janks readings: we all hold privileges that make certain literacies so accessible to us that we don’t even recognize that we have that literacy. It’s only after we see someone else struggle with something we are literate in that we can recognize our privileges.  

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Angela Davis and Literacy in Prison

Angela Davis/Toni Morrison Talk-Nick Foulon

The biggest take away I had from the talk with Angela Davis and Toni Morrison was the impact of incarceration on literacy. At one point, Angela Davis recounts how difficult it was for herself and her fellow inmates to view books while in prison. While she acknowledges that she had special permission to read certain works, most of her fellow inmates did not have that privilege, but what I was most shocked by was the amazing lengths she had to go through to get books out to the other women incarcerated with her. Even then, she acknowledged that the number of books and reading materials that she could get to her friends was limited. The truth was that most of the inmates inside of that same prison were not being given the opportunity to read, and in a lot of ways their literary education was deprived of them. Being allowed an education is a big deal for me. My uncle William in Baton Rouge is currently incarcerated. Both of his sons-my cousins- have been incarcerated in juvenile centers as well. Going to Baton Rouge is difficult for my family, and in a lot of ways we live in two different worlds. Both my parents graduated from high school, and went on to college and graduate with degrees. My uncle does not have that academic background, and unfortunately, do to incarceration, my cousins do not either. One of the implicit things that I got from Angela Davis is that prison is stunting. There are so few reading materials that people are not able to build up necessary skills that would allow them to be successful later in life. Reading provides vocabulary, comprehension, and reasoning skills. Reading can teach you to empathize with others from different backgrounds or can teach you different perspectives all together. However, my cousins were not able to build many of the same reading skills while in juvenile detention. It’s not that they didn’t have school, but it is that the system of incarceration represents a rigid structure of schooling that does not meet every students need. Furthermore, most juvenile schools carry teachers that are inexperienced or have performed poorly elsewhere. Rarely does a juvenile center have a full library or even a smaller area that compiles literary works (p.s. this is true of the Eldora State Training School where I tutor weekly). These factors, and so many more inequalities, lead to ineffective learning in juvenile centers in prison. The juvenile center where my cousins went, The Jetson Center, held math classes with students from ages 14-18 in one room. While proficiency did not often reflect a students age, the overall range of proficiency in the room varied greatly which effected the ways that teachers could teach their classes. These sorts of difficulties, deficiencies, and ineffectiveness create greater systems of inequality in education. I find it hard to believe that any high-school age student can have a quality education while incarcerated, but I think that might also be the point. In class, Nai’ya explained that the lack of education in prisons creates a greater chance of prisoner reentry, and I would have to agree with her. By creating a system where prisoners are unable to learn effectively, there is greater chance that prisoners will be unable to receive job opportunities because they lack the education to perform necessary tasks. Both of my cousins are roofers now in Baton Rouge. They got lucky that my aunt’s brother runs a roofing company and would hire them. The truth is, most people following incarceration do not usually receive those opportunities. The fact that you must check a box that states that you have been incarcerated while filling out a job application is baffling. “The box” is a legalized form of discrimination in workplace hiring, but without the jobs necessary to keep people economically stabilized, and without the necessary education to succeed, the prison systems have created a massive pipeline of prisoner reentry. In the middle of her talk with Toni Morrison, Angela Davis says that it is so hard to get reading materials in prison because they are afraid that those materials will start riots amongst the prisoners. By this logic, the prison system recognizes literacy and literature as liberation. By depriving people of literacy, they can also deny people of liberation, and keep their prisoner pipeline strong into the future.

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“The Great Fear”- A Bibliographic Analysis of the Michael Brown Case

For my project, I analyzed the ways media portrays slain black youth at the hands of white officers. At first, I was interested in the media’s role in all forms of police brutality, however, the massive amounts of information obfuscated my ideas, and so I chose to focus on one case: the murder of Michael Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson. The Michael Brown case was my inspiration for this project, and his murder in 2014 was the reason I first began looking into the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Over the course of this project my scope began to change. I initially concerned myself with conservative media outlets alone: Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, ect. I began to realize a common thread of information that conservative news sources distributed. While unraveling this thread I was brought back to the Darren Wilson interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC. What shocked me about this interview was Stephanopoulos’ interactions with Darren Wilson. Stephanopoulos, normally I very difficult interviewer, was delicate with Wilson. Asking him softball after softball, and often encouraging Wilson to explain “his side of the story”. After seeing the interview, I became very aware of left-leaning media’s involvement in defaming slain black youth, so I expanded my scope to cover all media outlets. Newspapers, interviews, podcasts, and all news outlets of all political tilt acted as my primary sources. I supplemented this research with secondary sources from educational scholars whose focus was on black bodies.

Lastly, I broke down my sources into two categories. Number one, “monsterization”, the way the media twists words and creates soundbites to dehumanize black youth after they have been killed. Number two, “re-stereotyping”, the way media outlets actively try to connect black youth to existing, harmful stereotypes to eliminate any sympathy for the deceased. The following primary and secondary sources are labeled and divided into those two categories by post.

Thesis: Media casts slain black youth into dangerous, pre-existing stereotypes of black people to justify the death of an unarmed black person at the hands of white officers to a white public.

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Monsterization

Brown, Simone. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2015.

In Dark Matters, Simone Brown analyzes the effects of surveillance on black youth, and contends that the current systems of discriminatory surveillance are part of a system of “unfinished emancipation” (Brown 13) where 21st century black Americans are experiencing an extension of the white prejudicial fears that lead to 19th and 20th century black Americans being surveilled. Brown discusses that the inclusion of black experiences into surveillance studies is nuanced in its own rights, and that the topic of surveillance is routinely associated with white experiences who fear governmental control. However, black Americans, who disproportionately experience the effects of improper surveillance including stalking, police brutality, and misidentification, are not only left out of the narrative of peoples affected by improper surveillance, but the lack of black and brown representation in the study of surveillance is reflective of American’s lack of understanding of the unique surveillance experience of black Americans.

I focused primarily on Brown’s theories about black surveillance being tied to historically unfinished process of emancipation. Brown clarifies that an “unfinished emancipation” suggests that America’s contextual history of slavery matters in explaining the reasons why black Americans are surveilled (Brown 13). She contends that we must grapple with the historical significance of systemic mistrust of black bodies before we are to engage with current elements of racialized surveillance (Brown 13). Brown’s contention on racialized surveillance related to my studies into the Michael Brown case. Officer Darren Wilson stated that he believed that Michael Brown was the culprit of a gas station store robbery, later verified to be true. However, as the former police chief of Ferguson expresses in an address to the media, the reason officer Wilson initially stopped Michael Brown was because he was “walking in the street”, an action that most white people are afforded non-intervention from law enforcement (https://www.cnn.com/2014/08/15/us/missouri-teen-shooting/index.html interview with former police chief of Ferguson). The actions of Officer Wilson clearly demonstrate a belief that Michael Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson, two black teenagers, were improperly surveilled for “walking while black”, and explains the racist levels of surveillance as stated by Brown in her book.

Williams, Dana A. "'Dusk of Dawn': An Essay toward an Old Concept of Race; Or, on the Death of Michael Brown." CLA Journal 58, no. 3/4 (2015): 212-20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44324396.

In Dusk of Dawn, Dana A. Williams analyzes how W.E.B. Dubois’ ideas on race relations permeate the slaying of Michael Brown. In her essay, Williams explains Du Bois’ idea of “The Great Fear” where black people, upon garnering some form of esteem or social status, are immediately scene as a threat to white Americans. Williams offers that Brown’s slaying was tied to this belief that black people are dangerous when outside of their designated “place”. Williams asserts that Brown violated this place by engaging with officer Darren Wilson and challenging his authority to stop Brown (Williams 215). Any form of black bravado was insufferable, and officer Darren Wilson, impacted by his own threated white masculinity asserted his state ordained dominance by gunning down Michael Brown.

I focused mostly on the quotes by Du Bois that Williams used in her piece. An understanding that a black man’s self-assertation as a human being could lead to a deadly encounter with white officers informed my understanding of the Michael Brown shooting. I applied both Williams’ and Du Bois’ theories to my question about media’s role in proliferating the image of black youth as dangerous, even when killed. With greater analysis from this source, it becomes clear that media acts as an agent of warning to black youth, and as way to justify white fears surrounding black youth in the status quo. When officer Wilson defended himself in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, he added key phrases that signaled Michael Brown as an almost inhuman force that was fighting officer Wilson. By allowing officer Wilson space perpetuating blatant lies about Michael Brown’s appearance, strength, and size, news media played a vital role in making the lie of dangerous black teenagers more accessible to white Americans who needed a way to justify the slayings, and assess Michael Brown as a dangerous black youth who got out of his “place” and challenged a police officer.

Eligon, John. “Two Lives at Crossroads in Ferguson.” The New York Times, August 25, 2014.

In John Eligon’s The New York Times article, Eligon documents Michael Brown’s background, specifically looking into the months leading to his murder. Eligon’s article focuses specifically on Michael Brown’s previously dangerous behaviors of drinking and drug use. The article offers insight from Michael Brown’s parents who categorize him both as a prankster, and a young man who struggled to move forward in the world. Eligon’s article is part of a two part, front page article that puts the life stories of Officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown side-by-side one another. Interestingly, the New York Times is a reputable left-leaning source, yet despite this, the Times’ coverage of the Michael Brown case offered one of the most glaringly anti-Brown reports during the beginning of the investigation.

As one of my primary sources, I focused on Eligon’s propensity to focus on the darker side of Michael Brown’s past as opposed to the case at hand. First, by juxtaposing Eligon’s article on Michael Brown with the complementary one about Officer Wilson, the NY Times is making an implicit statement that both Michael Brown and Officer Wilson were fault for Brown’s murder. Along with the dark, grainy photo of Brown in a flat-bill cap next to Wilson in a police uniform, the Times paints a racialized picture that is known all too well in America: the white officer and the black thug. Starting with this juxtaposition immediately makes Michael Brown less sympathetic, and unfairly forces him into a dangerous stereotype that white Americans can more easily identify with black youth: a stereotype that can help white Americans justify an unjustifiable slaying at the hands of a police officer. Furthermore, Eligon goes out of his way to negatively categorize Michael Brown’s drug and alcohol use despite its irrelevance to his murder, and makes it appear that Michael Brown is in some way on trial for his own murder do to his past actions. The real racist homerun is Eligon’s statement that Michael Brown was “no angel”, a phrase that sparked a backlash on twitter and other social media platforms (link to article about backlash= https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/an-ill-chosen-phrase-no-angel-brings-a-storm-of-protest/). Eligon’s words reflect Du Bois’ claims about the “Great Fear” of white Americans, who use conceived stereotypes about black Americans to justify their conceptions about race. By casting Michael Brown as a person who abused drugs and alcohol, who was “no angel” in his past, white Americans are able to reason why Officer Wilson felt threatened by an unarmed teenager, and why Officer Wilson would not need to be charged for the crime.

Wilson, Darren. “Officer Darren Wilson Says He Struggled with Brown, Feared For His Life.” Interview by George Stephanopoulos. ABC News, November 25, 2014.

In this interview conducted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Officer Darren Wilson shares his accounts of the death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Stephanopoulos questions Officer Wilson on his actions, what Officer Wilson’s options were, and how Officer Wilson felt personal during the night of Michael Brown’s death. Most importantly this interview produced soundbites that many conservative media outlets reused and treated as fact in Michael Brown’s case.

I focused on the language that Officer Wilson used when describing his shooting of Michael Brown. At one point in the conversation, Officer Wilson is asked by Stephanopoulos to explain how Michael Brown interacted with him as Officer Wilson pulled his vehicle in front of Michael Brown to prevent him from proceeding on his way home. Officer Wilson responded by stating, “I put the car in reverse just past them… I kind of blocked them from escaping and I kind of provided security from everybody… He pushed the door shut and just stares at me… It looked like he was trying to intimidate me...” Officer Wilson’s words depict Michael Brown as an individual with little fear of law enforcement, and feeds into the existing stereotypes of black youth whose hatred of police manifest in dangerously belligerent behaviors when dealing with police officers. Officer Wilson goes onto explain that Michael Brown grabbed his arm inside his car, and that Brown’s grip was “like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan”. Officer Wilson is a man comparable in size to Brown, but based on his description of Brown’s features, Wilson would have one believe that Brown possessed some form of inhuman strength and body characteristics. This exaggeration in Wilson’s account is representative of existing stereotypes of black men, who are perceived by white individuals to be both more dangerous, and also inhuman or animal like in description and action. For example, Officer Wilson describes shooting at Michael Brown, and, despite the fact that “he saw his body kind of jerk”, Officer Wilson still contends that Michael Brown “appeared to be bulking up” as if “it was making him mad that I was shooting”. Not only is it ridiculous to think that an unarmed teenager would attempt to run through bullets, but Officer Wilson’s categorization of Michael Brown makes him appear more like a possessed animal than a human being. The George Stephanopoulos interview with Darren Wilson is important to analyze because this was the first time that Americans heard the account of the events from the point of view of Officer Wilson. ABC and George Stephanopoulos create a space for Officer Wilson to both dehumanize Michael Brown and connect Brown to an existing stereotype of the dangerous, inhuman black thug who puts their own life in danger to challenge the “rightful” authority of police officers. Even more so important, Officer Wilson’s words became solidified as facts in the case, based on no external merit or factual evidence, and were spread by conservative media outlets including news outlets, podcasts, and even some public messages from online personalities, reproducing the stereotypes that conservatives used to justify the slaying of an unarmed black teenager.

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Re-Stereotyping

Fitts, Alexis S. “Michael Brown and the Stories Journalist View as Newsworthy.” Columbia Journalism Review. August 28, 2014. https://archives.cjr.org/minority_reports/michael_brown_ferguson_media.php

In Alexis Fitts’ Columbia Journalism Review article, “Michael Brown Shooting and the Crimes Journalist Choose as Newsworthy”, Fitts explores the discrepancies between news coverage given to black Americans and other Americans for crimes. Fitts’ findings share that black Americans disproportionately are shown as suspects in ongoing police investigations on both local and national news. For some violent crimes such as assault, black suspects where shown at rates 30% higher than the actual reported number of arrested suspects for the crime. Fitts’ warns that the racialized tendencies of media outlets to cast the negative limelight of blacks has made black people, and in particular black men, easily identifiable as criminals.  

I focused primarily of Fitts’ contention that the media overrepresents black people when discussing suspects in crimes. Fitts’ research is important because it expresses how the media is a medium that constructs racist views of black criminality. By casting black involvement in violent crimes higher than the actual representation of blacks involved in those crimes, the media itself both helps to constructs and reinforces the stereotype of the dangerous black man that led to Michael Brown’s murder. When Officer Wilson stopped Michael Brown, he claims that he did so on the basis that Michael Brown, as a black male teenager, was untrustworthy. The initial stop by Darren Wilson represents the white fear of black men as a whole; a fear that is partially inspired by media overrepresentation of black people involved in crimes. However, more importantly, Fitts’ article speaks to the responses of conservative Americans who focused on Michael Brown’s robbery at a gas station drug store earlier that day (link to conservative Americans viewpoints article= https://newrepublic.com/article/119125/michael-brown-ferguson-reaction-trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman ). By understanding the media’s role in creating racist stereotyping of blacks as criminals, it is evident that what Americans have been gaslit into believing Michael Brown’s earlier criminal behavior is a reasonable justification for his murder.

Limbaugh, Rush. “New Media Destroyed the Myth of the ‘Gentle Giant’”. The Rush Limbaugh Show. Podcast audio, August 23, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaF0M-UJgz8.

In the Rush Limbaugh Show podcast, Limbaugh discussed what he considers to be the myth of the “gentle giant” (referring to Michael Brown). Limbaugh focuses on the video of Brown’s store robbery prior to his murder and repeats the contention that Michael Brown may have had his hand inside of Officer Wilson’s car while reaching for Wilson’s gun.

The most important aspect of Limbaugh’s podcast was the repetition of soundbites Limbaugh takes from other news sources. Limbaugh himself credits “alternative media”, which he considers himself a part of, for acting as the “apparatus” to stop the “myth makers”, or conventional news sources. The irony here is that Limbaugh does not recognize that his “facts” are soundbites garnered from major news networks. At one point, Limbaugh claims that Michael Brown may have (italicized to represent Limbaugh’s own emphasis) reached for Officer Wilson’s gun. Despite any evidence to hang his hat on, Limbaugh hinges his contention about how dangerous Michael Brown was on the unsubstantiated claim that Brown reached for Wilson’s gun. More importantly, Limbaugh doesn’t realize that this claim comes form a widely circulated claim from Wilson himself contending that Brown reached into the car for Officer Wilson’s gun, however, a later report in March of 2017 exposes an admission from Officer Wilson that Michael Brown never tried to remove Wilson’s gun from its holster (link to article from March 2017=  https://revolt.tv/stories/2017/03/14/ferguson-officer-wilson-nword-admitted-mike-brown-grab-gun-0600b90e43 ). By reproducing unsubstantiated claims from bigger news sources, smaller conservative media outlets such as Limbaugh’s reach wider arrays of audiences, and further create the false narrative of Michael Brown as the “black thug” stereotype. Most importantly, smaller news sources like Limbaugh’s have made a career out of categorizing themselves as “outsiders” who tell the truth that big, corporate media cannot or will not deliver. By categorizing big media as untrustworthy, Limbaugh and other alternative news sources cast themselves as the only reliable sources of information, creating a situation where any opposing news source must be inaccurate. This categorization of other news sources allows Limbaugh to reproduce the narrative of the black thug in the case of Michael Brown, and reach a new audience that will readily accept anything Limbaugh says because, based on Limbaugh’s own demonization, other news sources are not to be trusted.

Shapiro, Ben. “The True Story of Ferguson and the Gentle Giant”. Reality Check. Podcast audio, October 28, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMSO0CXnYtE.

In the “Reality Check” segment on his YouTube channel, conservative talk pundit Ben Shapiro considers the “myth of the gentle giant” when considering the story of Michael Brown. Shapiro focuses primarily on the actions of Michael Brown prior to his murder, and then briefly explains the coroner’s report on Brown’s autopsy.

I focused on the “evidence” that Shapiro provided on the murder of Michael Brown. One of the things evident throughout Shapiro’s segment is his sarcasm as demonstrated when he refers to Trayvon Martin as “St. Trayvon of the blessed hoodie”. When describing Brown, and other black youth killed by police, this sarcasm acts to demonize both the victim of the shooting and the victim’s supporters. Furthermore, most of Shapiro’s evidence is repeated evidence from bigger news sources including The New York Times article by John Eligon, and the George Stephanopoulos interview with Officer Wilson. By citing other news sources, Shapiro extends a prevailing narrative in media that brown was a dangerous black man. Shapiro repeats both the gas station video of Brown’s robbery, repeats that Brown was found with THC in his system, even brings up the Times’ report that Brown had taken up rapping (a fact that the Times considered dangerous and vulgar). Shapiro smugly mentions that several black (italicized to represent Shapiro’s emphasis) witnesses have appeared who validate Wilson’s side of the story, however, as an article from The Washington Post explains in November of 2014, many eye witnesses routinely see each situation differently, which makes eye witness reports somewhat unreliable (link to Post article= https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/25/why-many-eyewitnesses-in-the-darren-wilson-investigation-were-wrong/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.607c8edda21f ). Most importantly, Shapiro’s emphasis on black witnesses does not excuse that there were also black witnesses that supported Dorian Johnson’s (Brown’s friend present at the shooting) recounting of the story. In fact, all the witnesses in the case were black, so Shapiro’s point should be void, however, the smugness with which he states this point about the witnesses helps to further his point that “leftist media” is lying. More importantly, Shapiro is categorizing these witnesses as trustworthy based on race, and is attempting to make the Brown camp less credible. Furthermore, Shapiro is creating an implicit non-sequitur, whereby the witnesses, because they are credible must be supporting Wilson’s claims that Brown was reaching for Officer Wilson’s gun, however, there have been no witnesses that came forward to validate this claim. Shapiro is trying to use already unreliable witness testimony incorrectly to paint Brown as the stereotypical black thug by using non-sequiturs and terrible information. Shapiro’s account is important in media because it reaches new audiences and reproduces inconclusive and unrelated data that was used to cast Brown as the stereotypical “black thug”.  

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Great Fear-Conclusion

Conclusion: The media’s key role in the character defamation of Michael Brown represents a continuation in the long line of character attacks against black people inexcusably slain by police. By defaming Michael Brown’s character, the media makes the stereotype of the “bad black thug” accessible to white audiences, and extends the narrative that cops are being unfairly judged by movements such as Black Lives Matter. However, the most important aspect lies within the media’s framing of the case. By bringing on high profile, white members of the Michael Brown case, i.e. Darren Wilson, media outlets allow police to frame the murders of unarmed black people to fit their retelling of what happened, which innately skews the way American’s view cases in the public. If media outlets are meant to deliver unbiased news, then the corruption of news facts through the public interviews with officers under investigation, is in clear evidence of the bias media outlets have against black people. In summation, how do you win against police brutality when the media willingly participates in skewing public opinion of the deceased? Answer: you don’t. Surveillance of black bodies, whether through the lens of the media or the police, prevents the true emancipation that black people need to be free from harassment in America.

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Talking Back-Goonies

Last night I re-watched the Goonies. As a brief description, the Goonies follows a group middle and high school aged students who, in need of finances to save one of their friend’s homes, go on a search of hidden pirate treasure.

           One of the most interesting things about watching the Goonies now that I’m older is that I’m starting to notice more of the tropes inside the movie. The main character is asthmatic and nerdy but also still manages to be instrumental to finding the treasure. The bigger character is comedic relief, the brother is an 80’s jock, the Asian character speaks with a heavy accent and his inventions make him appear more eccentric, and so many more stereotypes. I got me thinking about the way we perceive youth. Despite all the combined reasoning skills of the kids, they still carelessly tie the older brother to a chair, leave without telling anyone, and even dare to challenge a group of outlaws who have already killed a person. More than anything, this reflects the “All Gas No Breaks” idea of youth. None of the kids even stops to think about how dangerous the situation is that they are in. At one point, the kids find the long-deceased body of Chester Copperpot: famed explorer and obviously more qualified than them to hunt for some long-forgotten treasure. While they are initially terrified by Copperpot’s deceased body, later on Mikey, the leader of the bunch, uses the fact that the kids have gotten farther than Chester Copperpot as a reason to keep pressing onward. To child me, it seemed so brave for Mikey to want to keep searching even though Copperpot was killed by a booby trap, and that Mikey himself had almost just been killed by a booby trap. However, adult me realizes that this a clear portrayal of youth as being unable to stop before they put themselves in danger. Which made me think about the parents and other adults in the story. Spoilers, the kid’s parents are barely even in the movie. Besides Mikey’s mom and dad, who are there in the beginning, and the kid’s parents who appear at the end of the movie, parents don’t really play a huge role in their kids lives. Both Mikey’s parents are struggling to pay the rent, and his mom in particular seems preoccupied with preparing the house to be torn down. Everybody else’s parents seem to be fine letting their kids be outside all day. It’s almost like the opposite of the “helicopter parent” trope that we talked about. It also wasn’t just the parents, but the adult villains of the story were also clueless about what the kids were up to. While the parents were naïve, the villains were incompetent, but I did get me thinking about youth resistance nowadays. A lot of YA fiction I have read emphasize that adults don’t know best. This is a huge departure from the adult dominated scholarship that we had read about the dangers of youth. The point is that The Goonies represents this departure, and plays as a testament to what children can do on their own.

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Talking Back-American Street

One of the ideas that I found really interesting from the “Do it Yourself” piece, was the idea that activism can be any element of yourself that you express. For Fabiola in American Street, this activism through expression was apparent in her language, clothing, and beliefs. One of the more interesting conflicts in the novel is her use of the word Matant, which is the creole term for aunt. I was shocked that her aunt was so opposed to her using creole language because she was creole herself, but I realized as the novel progressed that this forced version of assimilation was more a method of survival for her aunt. Even still, Fabiola persists in using the language that she grew up using in less an act of defying her aunt, but more as a way of self-preservation of her culture. I guess the thing that really struck me the most about Fabiola is, unlike her aunt who succame to the forces of assimilation, Fabiola truly tried to retain her origins even in a world that had taken away her mother (connection to Haiti), forced her to speak English only (literal erasure of knowledge as she struggles to find the correct words in English), and essentially forced her to be a different person than she would have been in Haiti. While it is considering a different medium, the DIY framework of challenging already established systems can easily be related to Fabiola’s life. Instead of being like her aunt and trying to forgo her life in Haiti, Fabiola tip-toes around the world of assimilation, and even if she is forced to learn the world of American street violence (often through her cousins and Dray), she is still able to ultimately remain true to herself, and even teach her cousins about the misconceptions of her life in Haiti. In that regard, using Fabiola as an example, I feel it is worthwhile to see DIY as more than a concept for art but also for culture as well.

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Marrow Thieves-Talking Back

I’m not gonna lie. I had a some trouble connecting the consumerism article to The Marrow Thieves. However, one thing that really did strike me when I was reading the article was how culture’s are impressed upon each person at a young age. Then I started to think about how it would be to have your culture torn away from you, and how it would feel to forget that culture. I think this is the heart of Frenchie’s problem in The Marrow Thieves. Being only around twelve when his father left, and his mother died, Frenchie never got to learn the intricate teachings of his culture. One of the more interesting interactions in the novel is when Rose mentions that she has been endowed with a sacred knowledge: the word “Nishin”. Surprisingly, and I mean I was shook, Frenchie is upset that Rose (who has only been with the group a couple of months at that point) has learned an ancient word before he did. Dimaline really wanted to make it clear that Frenchie was hurt because this man walked into the forest and yelled at the top of his lungs. I think the point in this scene is that Frenchie feels completely cut off from his culture. He wears his hair long because he knows that many tribes considered that culturally important, but he can’t really explain why that is. He also can’t completely articulate why he is so upset that Rose received knowledge of this word before him. He states that he’s more deserving, but why does it matter? Shouldn’t everyone get this knowledge to carry on the old traditions? Dimaline does a good job in forcing Frenchie to interrogate a bit of his insecurities later when he finds his father. Dimaline uses the interactions between Frenchie and Rose to show that Frenchie is changing. His outlook on life becomes darker, and he questions why his father never came to save him and his brother (and honestly it seemed like he was blaming his dad). This moment was really the big reveal for me. Just as Frenchie is turning on everyone he hears about Minerva, the elder who had been taken from them in a raid and was presumed dead. He hears from his father that she survived based on pure will and used some power that came from her ancestral ties. Basically, this is the moment that Dimaline uses to show that culture is ancestral and not related to any one thing. I liked this reveal because it not only allowed Dimaline to show her character’s innate strength, but also how they have grown in the novel. I think my biggest take away from The Marrow Thieves was that even though whiteness may commodify or destroy communities, there is no way for someone to take away your truth, cultural or personal.

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Talking Back-Respectability Polotics

One of the most interesting aspects of Mark Anthony Neal’s “The Devil Wanna Put me in a Bowtie” speech was actually the ending quote from Amiri Baraka , “The changing same”. I got me thinking about narratives about respectability politics and beating the system. Neal actually covered the best example I had about respectability politics: the lives of O.J. Simpson and Muhammed Ali. I’d actually done some research about this in another class, but I know for a fact the Ali was one of the most well-known athletes during his day. In fact, even before the war protests, Ali was still well known for his activism, and was well respected in the black community. Neal showed a photo with him and Jim Brown and some other athletes (and I know we viewed this photo in class too). I know that Ali was one of the leaders of their group, and was also one of the biggest supporters of the civil rights movement. On the other hand was O.J. who, if you ever watched the 30 for 30 Made in America, chose to deal with racism in the realm of respectability politics. There was actually a time immediately after leaving his hall of fame football career that O.J. was not all that popular. His acting career wasn’t great, and his celebrity status wasn’t getting him as many jobs as an actor as he would have liked. However, O.J. was somehow still a more bankable celebrity to book than Ali was. In 1975, People Magazine even called O.J. the “first black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media star”, even though Mohamed Ali was beloved in the black community for all aspects of his life and as a role model, and O.J. was largely only talked about in the context of his football career. The point is respectability politics go a long way in making a black person appear “less black” to a white audience. Respectability politics is inherently problematic because it says that unless you “de-blacken yourself” and appear less threatening to white people, then there is little room for you to succeed a world dominated by whiteness. The most problematic thing I noticed with respectability politics is not that it shames certain types of blackness, but that it nearly forced upon all black people. Sometimes, if a black person wants to be successful they have to do as Neal said, and shave your dreads for a bow tie. Better yet, one must transcend their race like O.J. “I’m not black, I’m O.J.”  

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Dear Martin + Butler Talking Back

One of the things I got out of Butler’s “We Need a Song” was her conclusion that students “push teachers, researchers, community groups”, ect to “think deeply how we conceptualize and engage with young people” (Butler 92). For whatever reason, this got me thinking about Justyce’s conversation with his teacher Dr. Jarius Dray (Doc). The thing that stood out to me about their interactions was their understanding of each other. I’m gonna be honest, I thought Doc was gonna be a cliché for a bit. Stone described him as kinda that teacher that’s just trying to “keep up” with the millennials he’s teaching (that 11:11 line and “my man” stuff was throwing me off for a bit). However, Doc’s the guy that really encourages Jus to continue his “What Would Martin Due Experiment?”, and we could probably trace the start of Justyce’s experiment to the racially charged debate that Doc supervised in Chapter 3. The point is, Doc is the one who encourages Justyce to continue experimenting after his fight with Blake and after Manny is killed. He’s perhaps the most supportive person Justyce has besides Sarah-Jane, and his role as a mentor and fill-in father figure are important because they inform us about Justyce’s decisions in the novel. It took me a while to realize, but Doc’s insights in the novel are just as much for the reader as they are for Justyce. For example, the way he explains Manny’s behavior to Justyce is also an explanation of the complexities of black urban vs. black suburban relations. Now, I will say this, like Ty had mentioned back when we read The Hate U Give, I still feel a novel like this is targeted at white people, but I do think that insights like this might be important for a young black audience to have as well. On another note, (sorry I’m not starting another paragraph) I really appreciated the way Doc and Justyce’s relationship varies. Stone has done a good job of not just allowing Doc to tell Justyce everything he needs to do. Instead, Justyce gets to learn a lot on his own. I felt that this spoke to Butler’s essay because of the lack of engagement with an adult. If we treat Justyce’s “What would Martin do?” like an in-class journal entry, it can be easy to interpret it as a form of in-class resistance (I’m saying it’s a document of resistance anyway and the setting is the only thing that prevents it from being an in-class case study). Basically, Doc, like any good teacher can supervise, but it is Justyce that comes to greater understandings of his world through his own meditations (journal writings). Therefore, when Butler considers how in-class acts of resistance help her “conceptualize” how she engages with young people, part of that understanding is that young people are capable of resistance all on their own.

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Talking Back-The Hate U Give

First, I’d really like to say that, despite what I’m about to say, I enjoyed speaking with the high schoolers about The Hate U Give. I think I was expecting them to a bit older (seniors as opposed to sophomores), but I’m not sure that would have made a difference. A lot of the confusion we had in our group was not necessarily because of age, but because of experience, and this really showed when the students asked us questions. For example, one girl asked me and J’Remi if going to a protest was fun. The only protest I have ever been to was a Black Lives Matter protest in KC. Even though the protest took place in a predominantly black location, we were constantly surrounded by whiteness. The reporters and film crew were all white, the counter-protesters (of which there were many) were all white, and (most importantly) the cops that meandered around the protest were all white. It felt like we were being watched. It felt like when could be arrested at any time. This all started because cops decide to shoot people rather than arrest them. J’Remi and I tried to explain this to the students we were with, but I’m not positive if it sunk in. It was wild to hear the two of them even ponder if the officer was racist (in there defense they both agreed that one fifteen was racist, but I don’t even know why it was a question). I what struck me the most was the levels that we were at. The Hate U Give is YA lit. The students we were speaking to were (at least I would contend) more YA than us in college. They focused on the relationship between Starr and Chris where J’Remi and I felt that Chris’ character may not have been necessary at all. The students hated Kenya (like really hated her) because they thought she was “rude”, but I understood that Kenya’s frustration with Starr was because Kenya wanted justice for Kahlil. Backgrounds definitely played a role in this discussion, and you could almost tell that was going to happen when the high schoolers walked into the library. The students of color from the high school grouped up immediately and found a group of students of color from the college. I remember back in high school, the rare times that we had a conversation about race, I would purposefully group up with other people of color. It was a comfort thing, but it also demonstrated the racial divides that appeared in our classroom. I was not comfortable talking with my majority white class about race because I felt like I had little back-up, so I selected groups where I could be safe. I think the same thing happened with the high schoolers when they were there with us. That’s why I wish more of them got a chance to share, especially the students of color in that class. I wanted them to be able to use their voice, and explain their situation. I love that the college kids got to have a conversation, but I also feel like maybe we dominated the conversation.

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Talking Back-Quiet

Kevin Quashie’s work on the power quiet really struck me because of the way youth are considered “too loud”. Adults tend to treat kids like speak too much, and don’t fully comprehend what it is we are arguing for. This leads to adults forgetting that we should have a say in the conversation, especially when that conversation relates to children. As effective as silent protests may be, it’s hard to organize a silent protest as a child because adults already don’t want to hear your voice when you are speaking to them normally. I think about the students in Detroit who walked out in silent protest. The school’s response was to suspend them immediately, even though what they were protesting was lack of resources and school closure that impacted their education. The school system obviously didn’t understand that they were protesting school closure, otherwise the school wouldn’t have expelled and exacerbated the problem. It was only after the suspensions were handed out, and that students were vocal about organizing their own school during their time of suspension, that newspapers picked up the story. While I do understand that silent protests have led to exposure, from the stories we have read in the articles it appears that if one is loud then one is heard. One of the interesting elements I got out of the Quashie reading was the concept of silence in the public sphere (Quashie, 2012, 22). For Quashie, silence can still be a mode of protest if it is already in the public eye. The examples he gives are the images of Tommie Smith and Peter Norman at the 1968 summer Olympics. While this image is a great example of a silent protest, it should be clear from both Smith and Norman’s professions that the two have something that most children do not: something that puts them in public exposure. Similarly, one could use Colin Kaepernick as an example. Kaep has done great work for the black lives matter movement through his silent protests during the national anthem. But what most don’t know is that Kaep has also donated millions to charities supporting people of color and organized countless groups against police violence. These acts don’t get talked about because, besides Kaep being humble, there is no exposure on these issues. There is nothing to bring them to the public eye. Unless one goes out of their way to vocalize their protest to media, communicates with governments, or just openly promotes themselves and their cause, it can be hard for your voice to get heard, at least on a national level. For children, who don’t have the same social notoriety as Kaep or Smith or Norman, it can be hard to get your voice heard unless you are loud and outspoken. Unfortunate, here lies the catch-22: be vocal and get shamed by adults for not being knowledgeable or stay silent and continue top suffer. For children there is no easy choice.

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Talking Back Youth Protest

One of the storys that really resonated were the actions of the students in Phoenix. Back in high school, we had four SROs that randomly roamed our halls, and this was really intimidating for me. They essentially were overpaid watchdogs, waiting for you to slip up so that they could arrest you. This fear was compounded by the fact that the SROs carried a taser which always apparent on their hip. So when I read the storys of the Phoenix students I instantly identified with their fear, but I also felt their anger with the school system. Why is that schools trust students of color so little that they need armed guards inside a place of those students’ learning. Furthermore, it’s ridiculous to me that there would be an overinvestment in policing students while there is not enough money to go toward new books and learning equipment. One of the students from the article expressed that she felt that the school was establishing a “prison to pipeline” system where the school had hired SROs not for the aid of the students but to imprison them (Brieanna Frank 2017). I really resonated with that because in my own school I had noticed that we prioritized policing over actual learning. Anytime a student acted out, it should have been the teacher’s duty to attempt to quell that situation. Instead, I remember time and again teachers going straight for the phone to call security, and there are so many dangerous outcomes when people authorized a weapon get involved. This made me think a lot of the Algebra Project in Baltimore. It amazes me that the city of Baltimore, instead of investing in resources for high-need students in the city, have decided to build yet another juvenile center (Umar Farooq 2012). How is it that city officials can be so blind as to think that there is no connection between crime rates and the lack of school funding that hamper students’ economic prospects. Here in Iowa there is little difference. I work for the Grinnell in Prison Program, and tutor at the State Training School in Eldora. The State Training School functions as a juvenile detention center, and, even though an amazing 50% of their kids come from Waterloo, the state of Iowa continues to invest heavily in the state training center all while the Waterloo school district desperately needs funding. The message I get from lawmakers is that it is easier for them to corral students of color in chains then to invest money in their futures. It’s the reason why those kids in Detroit walked out, why the students in Phoenix protest, and why the Algebra Project in Baltimore is so important. To see real institutional change in our school system we first need to believe in the kids that are learning there.