I am talking about media attention, or the lack of it, and possible reasons for it. I don’t watch the news because I hate their format. I check the news on fb and if a story catches my interest, I read it and if it is something that I want to read more about, I will search for it. Crime stories or stories about outrage are what I click on, so fb algorithm feeds me only that stuff, and since I don’t watch the news, that’s all I see. But as I said in an earlier post, I can’t remember the last story of a missing black person that I read unless
It involved some controversy I wouldn’t click on a missing person story and not many missing person stories capture national attention. This girl’s story did, probably because she was beautiful is my guess.
I form my opinions on my interactions, which outside of my former profession, have been largely positive. I work in a mostly black workplace and it is really nice to not be in an adversarial role, but when I was a leo, I had to deal with the thugs all the time and my only interactions were with the criminal element. I am not going to give you the “I have a lot black friends” line because I don’t. I live in a pretty homogeneous area and outside of the academic arena, we have few minorities, which is one of the things I hate about my area. It really limits the food selection. I would kill to have a Thai restaurant here, or Korean, Indian, Turkish, or soul food.
I get that, and you are right. I mentioned earlier that I can’t remember a missing persons case of a black person missing that made national headlines like this chick. I guess it is because she was beautiful and the cryptic texts and stuff made for a good story is why it took off like it did. But I objected to Reid’s “missing white woman syndrome” bullshit. She is complaining about the lack of coverage and she has a platform and she can start a missing person of the week story if she wants, but she won’t.
As for the other stuff, I think one would have to be pretty ignorant to believe that black people only live in the hood. But the ones that do live in the hood are a very serious public relations issue because of the violence and crime and it casts a big shadow, unfortunately. It is the same with police-the bad ones leave more of an impression than the good ones even though the bad ones are such a small number.
As for what I said about the number of missing black women, that number is currently around 64,000. So maybe that is the issue is that there are so many that no one knows who to pick to cover as a story. I just know that they seem to pick attractive women that go missing under mysterious circumstances.
And I don’t form my opinions based upon sensationalized stories in the press. I based my opinions about people of any race upon my experiences as a leo. I am pretty damn good at spotting the shady people, but I am also pretty damn good at differentiating the good people from the bad. I have biases and I lean on them in a pinch, same as everyone I guess, but I try not to let those guide how I treat people. That was one unfortunate aspect of being a leo is that I usually only dealt with the dregs of society-and when you live in such a homogenous area as I do (6% pop is black) it is hard to not have bias when the only black people you deal with are criminals, and as you said, it is what many people see on the news and once that opinion is formed, it is difficult to erase. I think what hurts even more is that you will see “bloody weekend in Chicago-89 people shot, 14 dead” and with few exceptions, both the suspects and victims are black. And my thoughts are that since there is no outrage or national marches over all this violence in the community, why would anyone else care about the violence. Meanwhile, a cop in the same city shoots an armed man and there are people in the streets marching and protesting but they don’t bother with the dozens of people shot in the same weekend in that city even when the victims are women and children’s.
Oh to be clear, I am not accusing you personally of anything.
I didn't mean for it to sound like I was personally questioning YOUR knowledge or watching habits.
My point is, is that the media tends to cover black people in a particular way. Stories that involve black people often have a "black" angle to them. They don't cover black people like just, people. There's
always a racial angle to it. I'm not saying it's intentional. And while I don't like Joy Reid, I don't think her point was a bitterness to Gabby, or to say that something intentional was going on either.
I don't think the bias is intentional. I know that there are serious problems in some areas, so I'm not downplaying those problems, or saying that they don't exist. But when the media ONLY covers those problems, it creates an image that isn't accurate of the whole. It's more a natural result of a media that thrives off of sensationalism.
You don't have to be white to have these biases. The biases work on all of us. Blacks are watching the same news everyone else is, and are susceptible to the same biases.
As for the other stuff, I think one would have to be pretty ignorant to believe that black people only live in the hood. But the ones that do live in the hood are a very serious public relations issue because of the violence and crime and it casts a big shadow, unfortunately. It is the same with police-the bad ones leave more of an impression than the good ones even though the bad ones are such a small number.
As for what I said about the number of missing black women, that number is currently around 64,000. So maybe that is the issue is that there are so many that no one knows who to pick to cover as a story. I just know that they seem to pick attractive women that go missing under mysterious circumstances.
I think a lot of people are pretty ignorant on things involving other people/communities. I doubt most people would've been able to tell me the breakdown of how many blacks live in poverty/gang areas vs. the suburbs, or that they've even ever thought about it. Which is natural.
But the image that is presented is that blacks are either constantly oppressed and killed by cops, or constantly trapped in some gang war, when neither picture is really accurate.
And when that's the only story that is being told, that's the only thing that people think about.
There are attractive black people that go missing. There are black kids that go missing, get kidnapped, get molested, etc. It's just not covered. This has been a problem for Native American women as well. I'm sure there's some attractive victims with some interesting stories there as well. Reid can do more, and hopefully going forward, she and other do so.
I get why Gabby's story got attention. People are just questioning why other people NEVER get any attention. Off the top of my head, i think black people are like 35-40% of the missing people, so it's not like what is being said is some outlandish untruth. But it all gets put in this "black" category, which is "gang/hood violence", instead of just stories of missing people, child abductions, etc.
Again, I don't think it's intentional, but it is feeding into this lopsided way of how people see these things.