4/11 Response

This week’s reading from Media and Minorities focused on how the news covers minority politicians. Although there were definitely some complications and some lurking racism found in some analysis of the news coverage, the racial bias seems to be less than in other forms of media coverage.

Of course, since we are analyzing minority politicians, this book is beginning to seem way out of date since it contains no coverage of Obama’s career and presidency and in a discussion today, this would seem like point number one. I expect that this just might come up in class. It seems to me that Obama’s campaign and election did indeed bring out some of that lurking racism Larson mentioned. Then there is the idea floating around that since he was elected racism is dead, but that has almost just become an excuse to say that racist remarks and jokes are funny because they’re not really “racist” anymore. This could be a good twist to Larson’s lurking racism and the idea of what is and is not a favorable comment. 

The second chapter in the section deals with coverage of African American politician coverage specifically. Larson seemed to indicate that this was the minority on which had been done the most extensive research, probably due to the African American civil rights movement being the most prominent (and this guess is going off of Larson’s last couple of chapters).

One point she brought up is that politicians like Jesse Jackson tend to be over criticized for shortcomings due to race. Larson chose a terrible example to make her point however. The author went on about how Jackson’s anti-Semitic comments about “Hymietown” were blown way out of proportion. In fact, this disturbing article reporting further on this incident shows that the remark probably should have been a point of major concern for the American Jewish community: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/jackson.htm

Well of all the things to criticize for, anti-Semitism is a pretty good one. I would hope that any type of racist, bigoted, or discriminatory remark by a potential presidential candidate is criticized, no matter what the race of the politician! I was not there during this presidential race, but I am sure there are other things Larson could have brought up as an example of racism towards Jackson besides Jackson’s own racist remark.

Why is it that Larson is limiting her minorities anyway? Jews have a long history of being stereotyped and discriminated against. Many people, including Jews themselves, do not consider themselves ethnically “White.” What about Middle Easterners? If anyone, they have the most recent history of violent racism against them by the American media. Larson is making claims about studying “minorities,” but her choosing of certain minorities over others counteracts some of her message.