Media Disproportionately Covers Minority Criminals

BHAVNA MAMNANI ’22
FEATURES EDITOR

When news of a pipe bomb being sent to Left-leaning individuals hits front pages and mainstreams news, our first reaction shouldn’t be to evaluate why a person did this, but instead assess the social implications. When entering the political field, our leaders knew the risks of being targeted for scapegoating, violence, and even assassination; so why is this such big news? The bombs were caught in the mail, and honestly, there was no chance that they wouldn’t be caught. Any sane person would understand the extraordinary levels of scrutiny packages sent to political leaders are subject to. The real question we need to be asking in this situation is why isn’t the media throwing derogatory terms at this man? We all know the answer to this. Let this man have been of just the slightest tan color and immediately the media would not hesitate to deem him a terrorist, so what does this suggest in terms of our society?

It’s no secret that American media outlets are outright racist and white sympathizers, but when do we draw the line? From avoiding to call a man who yelled “get out of my country” before shooting two Indian men in 2017 a terrorist to refusing to acknowledge the obvious terrorism intended in the pipe bomb case, the race partisan media is apparent and is getting out of hand. By cherry picking the definition of a “terrorist,” the media perpetuates the idea that white people are immune from committing crimes no matter the intention and people of color continue to face the ramifications that come from a sole incident. In a recent publication from Statista, over 50% of school shootings are confirmed to be carried out by white people, so why is it that the media continues to further the idea that white people can do no wrong but as soon as a colored person commits not even a crime, they are subject to the most slanderous terms?

My first step would be to call out the outlets that unconditionally reject the idea of a non-colored terrorist because the only way we can make progress is to recognize the perpetrators as what they are: the evil-doers of our society. Instead of babying them and excusing them from repercussions of their actions due to their skin color, we need to be proactive in realizing the mainstream media’s sympathy for them and reversing it by voicing our point of view. Not only can we finally bring justice to those who are wrongly deemed as criminals, but we could be on track to deter those who believe they face no consequences from committing crimes.