Biased Racists Complain About “Media Bias” in Trayvon Martin Case, Then Shocked That Their Bias Is Worse!
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012Michelle Malkin’s website Twitchy recently posted the following picture, purporting to address the “media bias” present in the reporting on Trayvon Martin’s death:
The only problem, of course, is that the image on the right is not a picture of Trayvon Martin. In fact, the image seems to derive from Stormfront, a well-known Internet haunt for white supremacists. Malkin quickly apologized for the error and corrected the post, though, of course, actually the image is still quite accurate. This is indeed a fine example of media bias. Where other news sources might use the older, fresh-faced picture of a deceased boy that his family provided to the media, Malkin went with the intrepid reporting of skinheads and neonazis and used a more threatening picture of a completely different kid.
Indeed, media sources are intentionally using images that portray Trayvon in a more positive light. Typically, Zimmerman is depicted in a mugshot next to a picture of a fresh-faced Trayvon when he was younger. This “bias” is a counterweight to the bias that already exists: the bias against African Americans.
Believe it or not, people tend to view African Americans with suspicion, and to associate African American styles of dress and culture with crime and violence. Trayvon looks more “innocent” in the photo typically used because he looks more white. It is helpful to use a photo where Trayvon is made to look more white because African Americans are already subject to a whole host of biases and prejudices—some of which could, for example, cause a guy with a gun to stalk a black man suspiciously around his own neighborhood! Still, it is nice to see that Michelle Malkin is trying to rouse up these irrational biases that make African Americans more likely to receive the death penalty over white people convicted of the same crime, that make African Americans serve longer sentences, etc, because, let’s face it, showing a picture where Trayvon looks white and isn’t in a hoodie or baggy pants with a gold grill won’t conjure up irrational prejudices and associations of crime in latently racist white people!
And that’s the point: It shouldn’t fucking matter that Trayvon wore hoodies and had gold teeth. But it does matter in an implicitly and sometimes explicitly racist society. These outward displays of African American culture are misinterpreted by white people as indicators of crime in just the same way a black kid walking home can be misinterpreted as someone scouting a neighborhood for a burglary. Displaying a picture of Trayvon with gold teeth, a picture that anyone with a rudimentary understanding of psychology knows will incite racist biases, doesn’t “correct” media bias; it enflames pre-existing prejudices. Meanwhile, displaying a picture of Trayvon when he was younger—without a hoodie, or a sideways hat, or gold teeth, or any other fashion accessory popular among black youth—isn’t creating bias; it’s correcting the likely bias against an African American male by a culture that demonizes black men. A culture where even those black men that reach the highest levels of prestige and acclaim are accused of being secretly Muslim and met with constant demands to produce a valid birth certificate.
Michelle Malkin had to apologize for the picture, even though it correctly states that it is an example of media bias, because she recognized that her version of media bias, which used a fake image of Trayvon, was not equivalent in degree to the media bias she was purporting to critique. It was orders of magnitude more biased. And this point shows why, even if she had shown actual pictures of Trayvon, using an image emphasizing his “blackness” is also orders of magnitude more biased: because this sort of bias is helped along and bolstered by ages of prejudice and racism (creating stronger bias), whereas the original “bias” she critiques is fighting desperately against this historical tide (weakening the bias).
So let’s make a deal, Michelle Malkin (pictured to the left), you can accuse the “liberal” media of bias by showing pictures of Trayvon looking “innocent” (i.e., “white”), but recognize that this bias is fighting against ages of racism, and doesn’t need your “corrections” to make things fair, because any of your attempted “corrections” will only be sucked into the powerful wake of racial biases and pushed far out into the sea of racism. Let the media have its “liberal bias” of portraying Trayvon as innocent in pictures, and I’ll let you take solace in the disproportionate incarceration, death penalty judgments, and false accusations of African Americans that more than make up for this tiny fucking bias.
Correction: I made a mistake. Earlier I posted a picture of a turd and said it was a picture of Michelle Malkin. That is actually a picture of a completely different piece of shit. I regret the error.
