Baltimore — Despite the fact that an African-American occupies the Oval Office, negative Black male images persist in the American media, making everyday encounters for Black men drastically more dangerous than they would otherwise be.
That was the heart of the message delivered by two legal experts who spoke here during a recent forum titled “Racial Anxiety and Unconscious Bias: How It Affects Us All.”
“This is not a matter of one group being affected and one being victimized,” said Alan Jenkins, a former law professor who now serves as executive director and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, a nonprofit that focuses on matters of racial equality and other issues and rights.
“We’re all affected and all victimized by this media onslaught,” Jenkins said, maintaining that research shows Black men are disproportionately overrepresented as the face of seemingly intractable social problems such as homelessness and crime.
“The first big headline is the media depictions are distorted, but they are distorted in particular ways that are particularly harmful and they’re potentially so harmful that they’re life threatening,” Jenkins said, speaking to a capacity-filled auditorium at a downtown library.
As a case-in-point, Jenkins showed the audience a clip of crime news story in which a 4-year-old African-American boy stated that he planned to get a gun when he grows up.
While the statement left the impression that the boy planned to be a thug or criminal in the future, left out of the footage that aired is the part where the boy said the reason he planned to have a gun is because he aspired to become a police officer.
