In our most recent unit in Humanities, we’re focusing on the civil rights movement. As you know, we already spoke about the 50’s, but we skipped past the civil rights movement so that we could go back into it later with more depth. Part of what we have to do is create blog posts, much like our ones from last round. It’s different this time, however, because we get to have more choice on what we make. All we have is a driving question, and we have to make a thesis around that and then show a final product. The driving question: how can the actions of an individual change a system?

One of the big examples we got in class was Rosa Parks. She refused to give up her seat on the bus because she didn’t like that she was bein oppressed. That spiked the bus boycott, which then caused the rules on the bus to change. Her actions changed an entire system. So I started thinking about how I could demonstrate that while also relating it back to today? What has a big affect on people and systems: the media. I had my thesis down. “

The Media Hasn’t Changed From The Past As Much As We Think.

How am I gonna tackle that? Well let’s look at a few examples here.

I think we all now who Martin Luther King Jr. was. Important civil rights activist, preacher, you get the gist. Seeing as he was a civil rights activist, the police didn’t like him much. He got arrested for being a leader in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and his mugshot was later published. Though, here’s the thing. Some newspapers published the mugshot to make his skin look darker.

It was mainly newspapers with predominantly white readers that published the darker version, used possibly as a scare tactic. Because that’s how things were back then, men with dark skin were seen as more intimidating. But this would never happen today, we would all hope.

I’d like to draw your attention now to the OJ Simpson case. Anyone who was alive in the 90’s knows about it, and most people afterwards do too. The unsolved case, nobody really knows if he did it. But when he was arrested, it went everywhere. It was the 90’s, football was big. OJ was well known. And guess what Time Magazine decided to do.

That’s right. They darkened the photo (even worse than what they did to Martin Luther King) as a scare tactic. Unfortunately, it was printed along side other mugshots that hadn’t been altered, and Time got a lot of flack for it.

 

Example 2: What is being reported? The media is now people get most, if of not all, of their information. Read the newspaper, watch the news, check social media, get a text from a friend. It’s how things work. But there are people who control how it’s being put out, and what is being put out. Back to the 50’s, there was a common occurrence called ‘lynching’. This was when if a black person stepped outside of the social boundaries, they would get beaten, whipped and possibly killed. It was terrible, and brutal, and it was now a lot of white people kept their power in the south. There was knowledge that it happened, but no media ever spoke of it. That was until Emmett Till was lynched, and his mother did something about it.

She put his body on display for people to see, she was showing them that things weren’t right because her son had been killed for whistling at a white woman. Then and only then did the media pick up on it. She had to make so much noise that it forced people to listen to her. And the worst part is: no one was convicted. The men that beat and shot this kid went on trial and weren’t convicted. They later went to Time magazine and pretty much admitted to it. But the jury was all white men, the entire court staff were white men. So no wonder they weren’t convicted.

Let’s bring this back to today. White men beating up black kids and not being convicted. That surely doesn’t happen?

Of course it does. All the time you hear the headline ‘black man shot by police’, or ‘unarmed black teen brutalized’. This still happens, but we’ve almost because immune to it. So much so that we can put the word ‘another’ in there because it’s just become normal. I can be so sure that almost none of these cops have done a single night in jail because of it. Is it still being reported on? Yes, that’s an advance. But nothing is being done.

So we thought the 50’s were so bad with racism and bigotry? We’re just as bad. I am embarrassed that there are still things going on. But it’s just more hidden now. People are suffering and dying and we go about our day to day lives like it’s nothing. I still see racist cartoon sometimes. That is a fact. We learn about racist cartoons in school and people feel sick. But during the summer, Serena Williams lost a tennis game. Then this came out:

Just because we only see a portion of racism does not mean it isn’t still there.

The 50’s were racist, and we aren’t much better.