Week Ten

In "Criminalizing Black Culture" Stabile discusses inconsistencies in how crimes are investigated based on race. She uses the Stuart murder as an example stating that had the Stuarts been black the media would have been nowhere near as interested  and police would have investigated the husband more. She then discusses the criminalization of the black woman beginning in the late 60's and focused on unwed mothers receiving welfare. In the 60's black women were held responsible for crime by breaking the strong social ties that are held together by the household being run by the man. When the Watts riots broke out in 1965 this too was blamed on the black woman breaking down black society by emasculating men. Black women were then seen as whores having children out of wedlock just to get welfare, further breaking apart black society. This then morphed into crack mothers in response to the crack epidemic. Then in the 80's the big concerns with blacks were black on black crime and drive bys. To me all of the discrimination caused discrimination and violence begot violence. Whites in power have tried any means necessary to keep blacks down and further push them into poverty giving them no choice but crime.

In Schubb's article he discusses how the term racism was never used and frequently news anchors claimed that the riots had nothing to do with the Rodney King verdict but did hardly any interviews from people actually involved. I feel that the way these riots were handled by the media was just ridiculous. They threw anchors out in the streets who weren't accustomed to live tv and they got what they paid for which was crap.