Week 10 Blog

The readings for this week discussed black culture in crime and the media. They analyzed the plight of blacks in America and how they've come to represent an unproportional amount of crime in the media in the US. They explored many different views on this topic and delved into the process by which the system came what it is today. He analyzed the Moynihan Report and the repercussions that would have on the stance of the media of the time and on the government and their actions. They also analyzed Black criminalization in specific circumstances such as the OJ Simpson and Rodney King trials and how these contributed to the ideas of the trends of Black male violence on white femininity. They also analyzed the difference between Crack and Meth in the view of the public, being respectively black and white drugs typically. Crack was highly criminalized and and looked down upon where as Meth was seen more as a predator on its poor victims who could be anyone even nice, white, businessmen. It also went in to Reagan's administration and the war on drugs and it's many resonating effects that it had on black culture. As for this weeks viewing on the LA Riots, that was crazy. That is something that I had never known about before and can hardly believe what went down. It's crazy to read about these little things here and there but then these riots that were the culminating results of it all. The gangs and violence that seems to be for no reason, or is it all because they couldnt get into the boyscouts. Eye-opening, crazy to think about. My favorite thing the guy said was "if you want to oppress somebody, make the tool or object of their own oppression." Smart guy... My least favorite was when they said it was "5 times worse the violence in Northern Ireland," that is simply not true. They used either a specific timeframe or a specific amount of time to make it sound more significant. That statistic is skewed and manipulated.