News has an expiration date. This has become painfully clear to me once again during the vigorous debate over the New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly lecture and protest. In the past few days, especially in reference to the thoughtful and elaborate response the authors of the Kelly debate wrote in the pages of this newspaper (“Standing for racial justice: A public statement,” Nov. 11), the characterizations “fed up” and “over it” have been brought up multiple times by fellow students, as were remarks such as “oh, that again” and “the protesters got what they wanted, so why are they going on about it?”
In part, this notion of fatigue stems from the way in which the current media landscape functions. What is news one day is no longer of interest the next, as new events demand — and usually merit — print space and airtime. The Herald’s opinions editors sent an email to columnists saying they were “swamped” with Kelly-related columns and to please not write about the incident. Other professional news sources abide by similar principles. How much coverage is enough?
The obvious misunderstanding here is that the Kelly affair is not merely a singular event but a manifestation of larger structures of inequality that frame our daily lives. By characterizing the ensuing debate as focusing, repetitively so, on a single event — i.e. the protest — it is tempting to forget that the expressed dissatisfaction pertains to trends much larger than one individual coming to campus. No one “got what they wanted” yet, because racial inequality remains ingrained in public policy.
Journalists frequently toss around terms such as “oversaturation” and “desensitization” to explain that an overload of exposure ultimately does more harm to a cause than good. Violent imagery, for example, is said to desensitize audiences. Viewers are so accustomed to seeing reports of shootings and robberies that they no longer seem as shocking or as requiring of immediate individual action. But there are underlying politics of reporting that are less widely discussed: Who or what gets reported on, and how frequently?
Race is still a key factor in this. A 2010 national study showed that people of color, especially black Americans, are overrepresented in news reports as perpetrators — 37 percent of perpetrators in the media are minorities compared with just 21 percent of actual arrest reports — and underrepresented as victims. Conversely, whites are disproportionately shown as being victims of crime and almost never as perpetrators. Cross-racial crimes, particularly black-on-white crimes, are most likely to receive news coverage and to be widely disseminated. In short, the media presents a heavily skewed and racialized image of the reality of crime.
On the other hand, certain types of incidents such as violence against colored bodies have apparently become so “normalized” that they hardly receive attention in U.S. media. Nineteen-year-old Renisha McBride, unarmed, was shot and killed in Detroit at the beginning of this month after she disorientedly rang a stranger’s doorbell seeking help after a car accident. In September, Jonathan Ferrell, a former Florida A&M football player, met the exact same fate in North Carolina. I read about both incidents in British news sources before the U.S. media picked up on them. Even then, it was always the usual suspects — the sources “unmasked” or derided as extremely leftist by David Horowitz and the right wing — who devoted an in-depth analysis to the cases, meaning that the majority of Americans never heard about them.
The fact that public policies such as “stop-and-frisk” further legitimize and ingrain the notion that somehow skin color is an indication of propensity to criminal activity only exacerbates this issue. If the media says it and public policy corroborates it, many people believe it must be true.
So no, I don’t think the Kelly debate has been going on for too long. But the cameras have left, and to a certain extent, the spotlight has shifted. As with any major news story, the majority of people performed their “civic duties” by expressing outrage, only to then lose interest and move on, neatly tucking away their activist sentiments until another incident arises. I do not question the sincerity of this majority. But its expression of fatigue undermines the work that the activists commit to 24/7.
In Brown’s case, the underlying power structures and biases that sparked the Kelly protest are still here. I know there is a group of students — though I don’t know them personally — working every day to change these structures. They are full-time activists.
At the very least, the rest of us could take the time to inform ourselves and read multiple perspectives so we are exposed to different views before forming our own opinions and before saying we are tired of hearing about it. If not active participants, at the very least we can be active supporters or an active audience, ready to lend a hand when asked — or ready to substantiate why we are not lending a hand, as freedom of opinion remains the cornerstone of this University (“Editorial: The function of the University,” Nov. 12). No matter what your view, it is important to not give into those feelings of, “Oh, not that again.”
Suzanne Enzerink GS is in American Studies. She can be reached at suzanne_enzerink@brown.edu.
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