Acknowledge Injustice. Stop Looking For the Perfect Victim.
Dear Media,
Stop looking for the perfect victim before acknowledging injustice. The world is an imperfect place and we should all be comfortable with that. Systematic racism has gone underreported across the span of American history because black people have been inherently criminalized. Modern “policing is based on the mindset that people of color commit more crime and therefore must be subjected to harsher police tactics. Police argue that residents in high crime communities often demand police action” (Vitale, 2018, p.51). Criminalizing someone or a group of people is a typical way of discrediting someone’s experience. Once someone has been perceived as a threat, people are less likely to want to understand what happened from their perspective. That’s where the danger lies. People then perceive the individual being persecuted as a threat, and not a victim.
An example of this type of behavior can be found in the police’s characterization of young black and latino people as gang members. Calling an incident “gang related,” is an effective method of having the general public turn a blind eye towards how these people are treated and the follow-up of a case. Accusations of abuse by police officers are often justified on the basis of the crime the individual has been accused of. They claim they need to be harsh because these are harden criminals. This is inherently flawed since every person has the right to be respected. You cannot assume that because someone was violent they will be and are continuing to act violently. The police understand this perfectly. When they arrested Dylan Roof, a white man who had just shot and killed 9 black people in a church, they were respectful to him. He was even taken to get fast food before being booked into jail. Yet, black people are treated completely differently in that respect. In the 1990s, calling young black men “Super Predators” was often used to dehumanize young black men in the eyes of the public, seeing them as inherently more criminal and thus, more likely to be guilty. This led to the incarceration of minors who were charged “as adults”. Black people have been disproportionately characterized as morally flawed and it has to stop.
Women have been also been faulted for being imperfect victims. Upon accusing a man of rape, women have often been stereotyped as sluts and thus unworthy of public concern, attention, or airspace. This slut shaming has occurred in court and in the media to discredit their accusations of mistreatment and abuse. Once discredited, the public interest fades. These tactics of discrediting an individual to dismiss the person’s trauma without addressing it. There is no such thing as a perfect victim. That does not excuse turning a blind eye to offenses committed against every day people.
Men have also been treated disrespectfully due to their sexual history. After the death of George Floyd, there were many people who tried to attack his record directly. I won’t go into all of the details because that would be feeding into this negative method. However, one accusation was that he had acted in a pornography film. Bringing that up, in the context of considering his demise, is a blatant attempt to discredit the value of his life. That is simply unacceptable. It does not matter what he chose to do as a consenting adult. This does not take away the value of him as a human, a father, a brother, or a son.
We are living in a world where people often feel overwhelmed by the information they receive about incidents that happen in a variety of settings. As a result, people often subconsciously sort information, deciding which stories to keep at the forefront. The media must be conscious fo how black people are characterized and how their lives are appraised in the public. Provide a comprehensive picture of the individual, what they were able to accomplish, what their hopes and dreams were, and the positive influence they had on those around the. If you mention the bad, don’t do it without the context of their intricate lives
Vitale, A. S. (2018). The end of policing. London, UK: Verso.
