#iwakeupblack

The Boston bomber made the cover of rolling stone…remember?

Let's talk about why these two things are related.

Mike Brown…did not have a police record, he was due to start college this week. Yet the efforts to link him to a robbery have been enthusiastic as if that link would nullify the actions of the officer.  

Let's not talk about the facts i.e. the questionably close time of his murder to the time of the robbery he was allegedly part of or the fact that the person in the video is wearing different shoes…or the fact that no mention of a robbery was made over police communication before or after his shooting until the incident report was made.

The actual facts of the case are pretty much irrelevant…. if facts meant anything George Zimmerman would be in jail….this is about culture … this is about who tells stories and how they tell them… this is about which voices are silenced and which are amplified

Simply uttering that they suspect <--- he was involved in the robbery is a subtle justification. Subtle way of saying he was no angel…

In life and in writing the sting of death is dependent on how that character has been revealed to us. People die in all of our favorite stories don’t they? When it’s a hero or one of the characters we've grown to love it’s sad to us, it tugs at our heartstrings it makes us angry, we ask questions<--- .... but when it’s a villain…we rejoice, it's a relief, we might not have done the same but we can see why etc...etc.... Isn’t that amazing? Simple words can be the difference between lamenting a death and rejoicing about it or shrugging it off in a well-what-do-you-expect manner…

Why is this relevant ? Because the way the media tells the story of Mike Brown, the subtle hooks that nudge us towards thinking he was an unsavory character are there to help us justify his death. Whether reporters, everyday people, bloggers do this consciously or unconsciously speaks to a culture that by default nudges us towards painting black people as unsavory characters, especially when they are the victims or the perpetrators of a crime. 

Now you'll say...perpetrators ? well aren't all perpetrators of a crime unsavory? You're taking it a little too far. Well..let's see..the Boston bomber was on the cover of rolling stone ... the tag line? : "How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster" The picture of him on the cover depicted him as handsome, fashionable and one might even say gentle with the way his hair is slightly tousled in the picture. The article was deeply researched and pulled from interviews of family and friends both present and past to present a complete picture.

See the difference? 

Boston bomber ? How could this happen? rolling stone asks what makes him tick? he MUST be sick in the head! it's time to talk about mental health! 

Mike Brown? suspected part of robbery. thug? pants falling down? *insert bad selfies* 

Whether you want to admit it or not these tiny things, these words these patterns of speaking about people of color, especially BLACK people skews public perceptions and drags attention away from the core issue.  

Boston bomber, Mike Brown. 

one of these people is dead..but only one definitely committed a crime

one is subtly being framed as a thug, and one was very overtly framed as an altogether good person who snapped or inexplicably veered off course (covert excuse for his actions). 

narrative is very important.

OMG! so glad you shared this lOL does that make me a bad person?

Some(most) of these are such blatant scams that I don't think laughing about them makes anyone a bad person, except for the people who are doing the projects.