5 Reasons America Is Unjustly Afraid Of Young Black Men

Misreported Statistics Used to Reinforce Black Men as Violent One statistic commonly misused by a misleading media is: 49% of murder victims are black men. 93% of those are killed by other blacks. However, that racial exclusivity was also true for white victims of violent crime—86 percent were killed by white offenders. This is because there's no such thing as "black-on-black" crime. These statistics ring true for all races in America, because people of a particular race tend to live in the same neighborhoods. A statistic that is rarely even spoken about though, is: according to the 2011 FBI report on hate crimes, racial bias accounted for 46.9 percent of those. That is almost half of hate crimes. That means we still have a race problem in America. Media's Subtle Way of Presenting Black Men as Less Than Human The media often seems to generate an image of Black men as being "exotic" or somewhat beastly. These images are often reinforced by the way the media presents popular Black Athletes. The Lebron James "King Kong" Vogue magazine cover is one of the most recent and popular examples of this. ESPN analyst Jemele Hill called the cover "memorable for all the wrong reasons." But she said in an interview that the image is not unusual - white athletes are generally portrayed smiling or laughing, while Black sports figures are given a "beastly sort of vibe." A Racially-Biased 'Justice System' That Criminalizes Black Men More than 2.3 million men in America are in prison — about half for drug crimes. Seventy percent of all men imprisoned are Black or Hispanic. According to the NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet: “five times as many Whites are using drugs as African-Americans, yet African-Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites” and “African-Americans represent 12 percent of the total population of drug users, but 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59 percent of those in state prison for a drug offense.” This systematic oppression of Black people, creates an unfair environment that paints Black people as criminals. However, far too many of the people in prison are there for non-violent crimes. The Portrayal of Black People In TV Shows Black people have never been in control of their own media outlets and have therefore never had control of the images used to portray them in society at large. TV shows often represent Black males in a negative light, usually casting them to play a villain or criminal. Making matters worse, is the fact that today's depiction of Black people on TV has seemingly devolved. Gone are the images of middle class Black people on TV shows like The Cosby Show or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Instead, those shows have now been replaced by reality TV shows like The Real Housewives Of Atlanta and Basketball Wives. The Glorification of The 'Thug' Mainstream media has for decades chosen to over glorify Black men as thugs. Although this image may stem from the popularity of rap/hip hop culture, the truth is that is doesn't represent Black society at large. The image of the Black man as a "thug" was recently displayed on the world stage this year as popular NFL player and Stanford graduate Richard Sherman was wrongly depicted as a thug. The word “thug” has been used so many times by the same sort of people about the same sort of thing that it’s no longer even accurate to call it code—it’s really more of a shorthand. It means a Black guy who makes white folks a little more uncomfortable than they prefer. As Sherman put it: “The only reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s the accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays,” Sherman said. “It’s like everybody else said the N-word, and then they say ‘thug.’ And that’s fine. That’s where it’s kind of, you know — it kind of takes me aback. And it’s kind of disappointing, because they know. What’s the definition of a thug, really?” Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com http://www.thedailybeast.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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