Recently, my little sister relayed to me a conversation she had with a friend, who I will call Katy. They were discussing the grand jury's failure to indict Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown. Katy mentioned the fact that Brown had robbed a convenience store, with the implication being that he was a criminal and this somehow justified Wilson's actions. My sister, who is 19, responded that many of their friends and peers stole from the convenience store near their high school, and did Katy think that they also deserved to be shot by the police?
While this conversation is illustrative, the responsibility for Katy's misguided analysis of Mike Brown's death goes far beyond a young college student. Katy's perspective reflects a much broader problem with the media's coverage of cases in which a police officer kills a young black man or boy.
Unfortunately, police killings of black men and boys dominated news in 2014. In general, mainstream and conservative media's coverage of these grim events has been atrocious. It seems that whenever an unarmed black male is the target of police violence, headlines focus on whether the victim has a criminal record or used drugs. Yet the same attention is not given to whether the perpetrator of the violence had a history of abusing power, racism, or violence in the course of duty.
The most shameful media coverage in this vein occurs when the victim is a child or teenager. An egregious example of this was coverage of Tamir Rice, a 12 year old who was shot and killed by a police officer while playing with a toy gun. Headlines about the tragedy included, "Tamir Rice's father has history of domestic violence," and the same reporter, Brian Blackwell, reported the fact that Rice had no criminal record. Mentioning Rice's or his parents' criminal records implies that the existence of said records could be an excuse for an agent of the law killing a little boy who was playing in the park. It is beyond insensitive and offensive, and has nothing to do with the case.
In another case that has dominated news this year, black teenager Mike Brown was also unarmed when killed by police officer Darren Wilson. The media had a field day with the fact that Brown had likely stolen some cigars from a convenience store and may have committed other petty crimes. Brown was a teenager who recently graduated from high school and was about to go to college. And like pretty much every teenager, he may have done stupid things. This is what teenagers do. Testing boundaries is a quintessential part of growing up. And more importantly, his potential petty crimes had nothing to do with Wilson's decision to shoot him to death; he was not in the process of robbing the store when Wilson shot him repeatedly. Rather than legitimate analysis, the widespread reports on his theft were simply an unfair assault on the character of a teenage boy because of his race. This sort of reporting simply reflects the racism and laziness of much of mainstream American media.
Likewise, a bit further back, the media continuously reported on whether Trayvon Martin had a criminal record and the fact that he had marijuana in his system after he was killed by vigilante George Zimmerman. As most probably remember, Zimmerman killed Martin when the teenager was on his way home from buying snacks at a convenience store. Martin was also unarmed.
A focus on the petty theft of black boys and teenagers who are wrongly killed by law enforcement is just another example of the manner in which our society dehumanizes black Americans. I am white and attended a private high school in Chicago, and then an elite liberal arts college on the east coast. I am young enough that I can easily recall the behavior of my friends and peers in high school and college. And while most of us were not arrested, many did things such as use drugs and commit petty theft and other minor crimes. This is simply what teenagers and young adults do. To suggest that any of them deserve to get killed for this is simply ludicrous. And it is equally ludicrous to imply that young black men deserve to die for the same actions. How many parents believe that their child should possibly be killed by a police officer when they catch them doing graffiti, smoking pot, or stealing some cigars?
I wish that all the pundits and blowhards who have reported on the criminal records of unarmed black boys who were killed for no reason would think back to their own youths. If they did not do things like use drugs or steal from a convenience store, undoubtedly their friends, family members, or acquaintances did. Does this mean their murder by the police or a vigilante would have been justified? If they ever stopped to think about this, maybe they could recognize the truly hypocritical and racist nature of their reporting.