Either I’ve became accustomed to Larson’s writing style or this week’s reading wasn’t as… shall we say, disruptive, as it could have been. What bothered me the most other than Larson’s omission of Malcolm X, Elderidge Cleaver and The Crisis magazine, was how she wrote about the media as having two sides, but that ‘double-sided monster’ was more often than not being told from the dominant, white perspective. There were few times that Larson gave her readers the inside outlooks of these social movements when there are obviously sources to gain insight from, such as The Crisis magazine (which used to be titled Fire!) that is the NAACP journal. It strikes me odd that nowhere in this text has she yet to mention that text when it’s been one of the premiere sources for African American scholarship since the Harlem Renaissance. This is not just an issue with her Civil Rights section (and the lack thereof any other minority during this time) but this same issue is seen in the next chapter as well. Although, Larson does make one other noticeable differance in chapter 14, and that is if your a minority other than black, then you are capitalizing on stereotypes in order to gain publicity and possibly promote stereotypes rather than marketing the publics impressionability to gain awareness for a social cause.
Nonetheless, the issue of presenting a skewed media is one thing but framing minority issues in the media as not having a voice because the media is slanted, and then writing about this by omitting the ethnic point of views just seems illogical and counterproductive. This is one of those times where you say, “It’s good, but there’s always room for improvement.”
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