Perceptions

It interesting to consider the the perception of New York City, both for New Yorkers and in the rest of the country. From the outside, it may have seemed as if New York was quickly declining into crime and debauchery. Jobs and factories fled the city with the white middle class, just as the black population came in from the South. People lost their jobs and landlords stood to make more of a profit off of burning their buildings down than renting. Talk of riots, blackouts, strikes, and a sharp upturn in murder must have been alarming in this period to outsiders. The Kitty Genovese tragedy was labeled as an example of the cruelty and indifference of New Yorkers (which surely contributed to the city’s decline).

Surely, the headlines did not help with these perceptions. What people read about New York City was a place full of violence and indifference, a place rapidly declining. I am sure that these headlines did also not help to improve the perception of black people in the United States. The rise of black migrants in New York City was wrongly correlated with the city’s decline. No less than the derogatory “Wilding” headlines of the 1990s, those dealing with the riots and murder in the city only added to the negative view on the minorities who populated the city. And also like the “Wilding” headlines, the truth of this situation was obscured as soon as there was someone –black people, indifferent New Yorkers- to point fingers at. It is also difficult to refrain from drawing parallels to headlines that proliferated following Hurricane Katrina. The poorest minority populations received the smallest amount of help form the government, and were stranded in their flooded city. As I have learned in other classes that focus on racism in the United States (particularly my Race, Place, and Racism class) so many of the stories that came out of Katrina were focused on supposed acts of violence and looting committed by this population. Other groups, like police and racists then felt justified in committing acts of violence against minorities. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/us/27racial.html) They were not made out to be victims, but criminals. This, in turn, altered the kind help New Orleans received (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/16/hurricane-katrina-new-orleans-looting-violence-misleading-reports). One has to wonder, therefore, how much the headlines of violence in New York City also furthered its perceived decline.

I want to raise the question, given that this is extremely relevant to recent events, how headlines and the perception they further of black people as violent, has affected the cause of Black Lives Matter. Is this not a similar response that was shown to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s? Is it erroneous to parallel the two?

Side Note: I recently watched the new Amazon Prime series Good Girls Revolt, which documents the rise of women in journalism through fictional characters. They highlight the black power movement and its relationship with the media as a troubled one, with the media generally siding with police and law enforcement seeing the black power movement as inherently criminal. Meanwhile, other, more positive aspects of the movement –besides violence- are also shown, like providing food and childcare to the Harlem community.