by Michael Eric Dyson, nytimes.com
April 17
"In our not-so-distant history, many Americans conceded the legitimacy of black struggle only because its leaders brilliantly staged protests for the world to see. White citizens struggled to digest their meals in peace as scenes from Selma’s blood bath, for instance, flashed on their television screens.
But the optics of race are tricky. Today, the proliferation of social media may allow us to see more, but it doesn’t necessarily allow us to see more clearly. For example, with the exception of interracial dating, polls show that millennials hold many of the same racially warped views as generation Xers and baby boomers do. Stereotypical representations of blackness, some authored by blacks and disseminated on reality TV, are still accepted as the norm.
Problems arise when images of blackness contradict a received racial script. That’s why it was easier for some to believe that the video footage of Michael Brown stealing cigarillos before he died in Ferguson more accurately communicated his character as a “thug” than to believe that the last gasps of Eric Garner were the pleas of an unjustly assaulted man. We can’t believe what we see because it contradicts what we’ve been led to believe is true."
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