“Stereotypes of a Black Male Misunderstood”

Maria Teixiera

Livin’ life without fear,
Puttin’ 5 karats in my baby girl ear.
Lunches,
Brunches,
Interviews by the pool.
Considered a fool ’cause I dropped out of high school:
Stereotypes of a Black male misunderstood
And it’s still all good.
Unh, and if you don’t know, now you know...

-- Notorious B.I.G.

White America speaks of the growing equality for all the residents of this country. However, the truth of the matter is this: the more melanin in your skin, the further from parity you are. Nearly five centuries of slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Civil Rights Movement have come and gone; Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X among other prominent Black freedom fighters battled against oppression for true liberation. Yet the road to such freedom is far from sight. The lynching, hate crimes, and beatings are still going strong. Racial injustice in the court system, social stereotypes, and racial profiling by police officers are a daily occurrence. Anyone who speaks of present-day “equal opportunity,” the “end” of racism and a sense of “unity” amongst culturally and racially diverse groups is living in a bubble, formed by denial and fabricated by the media. White America, in the hopes of shedding or covering up its racist skin, wants to preach this pseudo-equality when in fact Blacks in the “U.S. of A” are still suffering from a society constructed by racist, untrustworthy individuals. Not only are Blacks in the capitalist, assimilationist misnomer “United States” continually suffering from physical violence, but we also suffer from institutionalized racism, including judicial bias, policing brutality, media brainwashing and anti-Black stereotypes.

On February 14, 1965, Malcolm X addressed the people of Detroit at Ford Auditorium on the need to educate ourselves about politics and media. “Then you’ll be in a better position to make an intelligent judgment for yourself. So as Afro-Americans or Black people here in the Western Hemisphere, you and I have to learn to weigh things for ourselves. No matter what the man says, you better look into it yourself.” Men and women, Blacks and Whites alike, fail to realize that the mass media is a powerful entity with the ability to place both contaminated and valid images or information in our minds. This influential medium provides us with information that they deem necessary. They provide us with mis-information that will brainwash us into conforming to their beliefs and views.

And they projected Africa and the people of Africa in a negative image, a hateful image. They made us think that Africa was a land of jungles, a land of animals, a land of cannibals and savages. It was a hateful image…. Why? Because those who oppress know that you can’t make a person hate the root without making them hate the tree. You can’t hate your origin and not end up hating yourself. And since we all originated in Africa, you can’t make us hate Africa without making us hate ourselves. And they did this very skillfully (Malcolm X, 156-157).

These media have been feeding their image to the public for so long that they have truly mastered this skill. The sad part is that not only does the White public embrace these images, as if they were written in stone, but Black communities do as well. These images portray Blacks as pathologically poor “criminals,” “gang-bangers,” and “druggies.”

The coverage leading to the conviction of Michael Lewis, a.k.a “Little B” in Elaine Brown’s The Condemnation of Little B (2002), is a perfect example of the effect of mass media on the public. Following Little B’s arrest for the 1997 murder of a Black father of two, headlines were plastered all over Atlanta condemning this 13-year-old boy. The Black and White communities of Atlanta convicted him of the murder long before his trial. The local Black “leaders” in the community did not think to protect this boy who was supposed to be “innocent until proven guilty.” These same “leaders” demanded fair treatment for O.J. Simpson when the media stereotyped him with a racist image, the Black man as “beast.” Instead of protecting Michael Lewis when he was being portrayed as a “thug” and “delinquent,” they chose to jump on the bandwagon and see him as the figurehead of all Atlanta’s problems. A literal scapegoat in an effort to build up the city’s image and economy, Little B was used to enforce the new tough-on-crime-laws. He had multiple strikes against him. He was young, Black and “from the streets.” No one stopped to think that he was a product of a disadvantaged, drug-infested community. No one stopped to think of his welfare when he became a ward of the state at age eleven and dropped out of school. Where was the judicial system to place him in a home and provide this child with the basic necessities to survive? Why were the courts so quick to knock at his door the minute they needed someone to blame? They were never interested in his well-being while he lived “life on the streets.”

Brown addresses the issue of media stereotypes along with more general topics of new age slavery in prisons and “U.S.” society at large. “Say, you think I’m really evil?” (Brown, 28). This one line from Little B was the basis for the entire book. When Black youth are suspected of committing crimes, they are portrayed as evil. When White boys are caught in the act, they are “possessed, misunderstood, alienated, isolated, or lonely--but never ‘evil̵’ (Brown 39). When “good kids” from a “good neighborhood,” a “good church going community,” or in other words, White kids from the suburbs, do something as monstrous as mass murdering their fellow classmates, White America asks, “What’s happening to our children?” (Brown, 38).

What went wrong is that we allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security by media representations of crime and violence that portray them both as the province of those who are anything but white like us. We ignore the warning signs, because in our minds the warning signs don’t live in our neighborhood, but across town, in that place where we lock our car doors on the rare occasion we have to drive there. That false sense of security -- the result of racist and classist stereotypes -- then gets people killed. And still we act amazed (Wise 2002).

Due to media stereotypes, violence and evil have a face and that face has Black skin. White America and at times, such as in the case of Little B, Black communities also believe that this image is real; that these portrayals of their own youth, living in their community, are valid. What they fail to do is re-educate themselves, as Malcolm X implored.

The public continues to believe that Blacks are the ones using and dealing drugs. They believe that Blacks are more prone to violence and criminal activity. For decades, throughout the United States, Black males have been subject to racial/ethnic stereotypes. Merely being a young man of color on the streets and highways of this country makes you a suspect for “law enforcement.” Racial profiling has given rise to an extremely appropriate term, “Driving While Black” (DWB), considering that a mass of profiling victims is Black. It is illegal for an officer to pull over a vehicle without just cause. So when they have “reason for suspicion,” they simply stop the driver on the basis of a traffic violation, with the underlying purpose of searching the vehicle for narcotics. Racial profiling is largely due to the effects of the nationwide “war on drugs.” Police officials have been using race alone to determine whether or not an individual or groups of people might be engaged in criminal activity such as drug trafficking. A majority of the discrimination occurring is against young Black males because they fit this society’s description of supposed drug dealers. In fact, in 1985, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles issued guidelines for the police on “the Common Characteristics of Drug Couriers.” These guidelines warned officers to be suspicious of rental cars, “scrupulous obedience to traffic laws,” motorists wearing “lots of gold” or who do not “fit the vehicle” and “ethnic groups associated with the drug trade” (Harris, 7). These stereotypes are targeted directly toward Black males. If a Black man is behind the wheels of a decent vehicle, and is taking precaution on the road, he is considered suspect, criminal, guilty.

The United States “law enforcement” strategy for curtailing drug abuse has had a negative impact on Black people. Blacks are being incarcerated at a higher rate than Whites due to racial profiling. 62.7 percent of Blacks are imprisoned for drug offenses, whereas only 36.7 percent of Whites are (Human Rights Watch, 1). One would think that Blacks are the main source of the drug problem in the United States; and, in turn, that racial profiling is effective in ridding this country of criminals. On the contrary, racial profiling concentrates on Blacks; therefore, if Blacks are the only group being targeted then only Blacks are going to be found with drugs. This concept is not hard to grasp but “law enforcement” insistently focuses their efforts on stopping Black males. This leads to the myth that Blacks are the primary source of drug usage and trafficking, considering the high rate of incarceration. The stereotype has been proven in fact to just be a myth. In March of 1998, a group of doctors, Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy (PLNDP), composed of high-ranking health officials from the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, released a study on U.S. drug policy. The PLNDP study showed that 50% of heroin users are “educated” Caucasians and that 60% of monthly cocaine users are White. Furthermore, 77% of regular marijuana users are White, whereas only 1 in 6 are Black (Muharrar, 2). An “educated” White man from the suburbs does not fit the “Drug Courier Profile” and has thus been systematically ignored by police officials. Yet it is clear that the majority of drug users and traffickers are (not-so-young) White males.

Racial profiling is just another form of oppression for Blacks. This tactic used by White officers does nothing except abuse and further diminish our faith in the “justice” system. The laws by which we are governed (and which we abide) are, allegedly, the backbone of this country. If we cannot trust the individuals that create and “enforce” these regulations what kind of faith is left in these representatives? If you are Black, you are not safe from “the long arm of the law.” The media has placed a false image in the minds of the residents of this country with regard to Black male youth. Many Blacks have taken this image and condemned our own while racist Whites use this “evidence” to support their ignorant, racially prejudiced views of non-Whites. Malcolm X said it long ago; it is time that we start educating ourselves and second-guessing the newspaper and all news coverage. Until you know the facts, take the information the media puts out with a grain of salt. “Nothing is as it seems.”
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References

Brown, Elaine. The Condemnation of Little B. Boston. Beacon Press, 2002.

Harris, David A. “Driving While Black: Racial Profiling on Our Nations Highways.” American Civil Liberties Union Special Report. June 1999/ November 2002 http://www.aclu.org/profiling/report/index.html

Human Rights Watch. “Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs.” Spring 2000/November 2002. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/usa/Rcedrg00.html.

Muharrar, Mikal. “‘Racial Profiling’ in News Reporting.” Extra! September/October 1998/November 2002. http://www.fair.org/extra/9809/media-blackface.html.

Notorious B.I.G. “Juicy.” Ready to Die. New York: Bad Boy Entertainment/Arista Records, 1994.

Wise, Tim. “School Shooting and White Denial.” Alternet. March 6, 2001/November 2002. http://www.alternet.org/story.html? storyID=10560.

X, Malcolm. February 1965: The Final Speeches. New York. Betty Shabazz and Pathfinder Press, 1992.

© 2003 Africa Resource Center, Inc.