Tag: race in the media

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Racing the Story

When Renisha McBride’s killer looked on his porch on Nov. 2, he saw a threat, not a victim. The middle aged white man wielding a shotgun looked at the 19-year-old, Black, unarmed McBride and shot and killed her at point-blank range.

Would Theodore Wafer have shot McBride if she had been a 19-year-old white woman seeking help? We may never know. But we do know that Wafer’s perceptions of who and what constitutes danger are informed by a media culture that is increasingly controlled by people who don’t look like Renisha McBride or her community.

According to a 2013 Pew … Read more “Racing the Story”

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Those Inscrutable Asians

I’m in the middle of doing a survey of the Sunday TV political shows, reading through transcripts of discussions of Asian American voting behavior just prior to and immediate after the recent elections. I was inspired to do this research when I witnessed with shock the complete surprise among pundits across the political spectrum over the overwhelming percentage of Asian American voters who chose Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. I figured I should check my perception of what went down against the record.

I won’t get into too much detail concerning the findings since a detailed report is forthcoming. But, … Read more “Those Inscrutable Asians”

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The Obama Asian American Landslide

Last weekend on the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, Wade Henderson the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund said the following regarding the presidential election:

I found the interesting statistic to be the Asian American vote. Because the Asian American community doesn’t have the homogeneity, the cohesion that people have talked about. You’re talking about South Asian, Vietnamese and others. The fact that they gave 73% of their vote to the Obama presidency tells you that it really is about policies and not about demographics alone. They are … Read more “The Obama Asian American Landslide”