The New Racism: First you deny racism exists. Then you smear the reputation of any black man who appears to be a victim.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/09/the_new_racism_michael_brown_and_trayvon_martin_deny_it_exists_and_smear.html

Did you know Michael Brown was a killer?

Did you know he was a devoted gang member with an extensive juvenile record who routinely robbed convenience stores and committed acts of mayhem? And did you know that when Officer Darren Wilson shot Brown, he wasn’t using unjustified force, he was defending his life? The 6-foot-4, 300-pound 18-year-old fractured Wilson’s eye socket while reaching for his gun, and was killed while charging at Wilson to land another blow.

If this sounds suspect—if it sounds almost unbelievable—then your head is in the right place. Nothing in this narrative is true. Racist innuendo aside, there’s no evidence Brown was a violent gang member, nor is there evidence of any serious wrongdoing—as a juvenile, Brown was never convicted of a felony nor was he facing charges as an adult. And while Wilson was taken to the hospital after his encounter with Brown, he didn’t suffer serious injuries—the fractured eye socket is a myth.

But if you read websites like the Independent Journal Review, dive into far-right media, or explore the world of Darren Wilson support pages, you’ll find plenty of people who buy the fantasy. They reject the mainstream picture of Brown: A typical teenager, struggling to carve an identity and a life out of his beliefs, actions, and missteps. In their minds Brown was a budding criminal, and Wilson a hero. Or, as one Wilson supporter said during a demonstration for the officer, “We’ll all see this in the end that it was a good shooting. You know, it was a good kill.”

We know why the Brown family was quick to give a loving portrait of Michael. Like any parents in their situation, they wanted the world to see their son as they did—a decent boy who didn’t deserve to die.

The question is for the other side: Why attack Michael Brown’s reputation? After all, if the goal is an objective look, there’s no need to explore Brown or Wilson as individuals. Brown could have been Gandhi or he could have been the Unabomber; all that matters for the case is what happened in a few brief moments on the streets of Ferguson.

At the same time, we shouldn’t be surprised by attacks on Brown. We know from all kinds of crime—and sexual assault cases in particular—that people are quick to blame the victim. It’s one reason sexual assault has such a poor reporting rate—many women (and men) don’t want to deal with the attacks on their character. We also see it in the particular instance of young black men killed by white figures (police or otherwise) in ambiguous circumstances.

In 1955, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam kidnapped and killed 14-year-old Emmett Till after he reportedly spoke to a white woman—Bryant’s wife Carolyn—in their Money, Mississippi, grocery store. After the two were acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury, they told their story to Alabama novelist William Bradford Huie. In their (improbable) version of events, writes historian Philip Dray in At the Hands of Persons Unknown, Till was “sassy and unrepentant.” “He showed me the white gal’s picture! Bragged of what he’d done to her,” said Milam, “I counted pictures of three white girls in his pocketbook before I burned it. What else could I do? No use lettin’ him get no bigger!” Black observers were furious:

Olive A. Adams, who authored a booklet called

Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed

for the Mississippi Regional Council of Negro Leadership in 1956, denigrated the “white girlfriend” story repeated by whites as “vicious propaganda, aimed at fitting Emmett Till into the ‘sexually depraved’ category among the stereotypes into which Negroes are so often cast. It was an obvious attempt to dream up a crime to fit the punishment.”

A half century later, you saw a similar dynamic with the killing of Trayvon Martin. And while countless Americans were sympathetic to the Martin family, many others were eager to smear the deceased 17-year-old, and they found voice on Fox News and conservative talk radio. “You dress like a thug, people are going to treat you like a thug,” said Fox host Geraldo Rivera, referring to Martin’s hoodie sweatshirt. Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze website published a list of crimes Martin may have committed while he was alive (the evidence was … sparse), and right-wing websites passed around a photo called the “real Trayvon Martin,” which was quickly debunked as a photo of The Game, a 33-year-old rapper. Something similar happened with Brown: After his death, photos circulated of a young man with a gun, labeled Michael Brown. In reality, it was Joda Cain, a murder suspect in Oregon.

There’s no doubt about the genesis of these memes. When people see black men,they think crime, and that cognitive link is so strong that some people will create “proof” to justify the association. Rather than treat Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown as typical teenagers turned victims, they'll work to dismiss them as “thugs.” But this says little about the proliferation of those memes in right-wing media. Fear of black men is a bipartisan problem—not something unique to conservatives—and it’s unfair to say otherwise.

It’s worth noting that the loudest voices in these events—figures like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly—are also people who dismiss the significance of racism. In his corner of the media, O’Reilly denies the existence of racial disparities in the criminal justice system—calling it a problem of “culture” in “ghetto neighborhoods”—and denies that there’s any kind of systemic advantage for white Americans. Limbaugh is more crude, alleging “reverse racism”—“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on’”—and denouncing the president for “race-baiting” when he speaks on race and racial injustice.

For these anti-anti-racists, accusations of racism are a greater concern than actual discrimination and prejudice against blacks and other minorities. It’s not that they support racism, but that they see it as largely irrelevant to contemporary life—any problems with minority communities, in their eyes, have more to do with cultural dysfunction, not racial inequality. Moreover, if there’s a racial problem in America, it’s not against minorities, it’s against whites: “Caucasian is not one of the colors getting helped,” said Fox contributor Todd Starnes, attacking the president’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative.

As rhetoric, anti-anti-racism is popular in the conservative movement. You saw it in Andrew Breitbart’s obsession with ACORN and Shirley Sherrod and Fox News’obsession with the New Black Panthers, and you see it in some attacks on Attorney General Eric Holder, alleging discrimination against whites. Against that backdrop, the memes against Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown make sense.

In other words, to dismiss racism as a general concern is to also stand against the claim that in the deaths of Martin and Brown, race matters. Indeed, you have to deny that discrimination mattered for either victim. And to do that, you have to challenge their victimhood. If Michael Brown was a thug, if he was violent and aggressive, then Officer Wilson was justified. Suddenly, it’s a “good kill,” not a deadly case of profiling.

Put another way, if countless people believe in the myth of the thuggish Trayvon and the dangerous Mike, it’s because they have to—without the monsters, their worldview couldn’t stand.

[Dan and Judy 614]

No need to make stuff up about Brown, there is video evidence of what he did like 5 minutes before getting shot. The video is worth 10,000 words telling what a great guy he was. I did stuff I shouldn't do as a teen but if

I got caught my reaction would have been to run or give up, not assault the guy that caught me.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

No need to make stuff up about Brown, there is video evidence of what he did like 5 minutes before getting shot. The video is worth 10,000 words telling what a great guy he was. I did stuff I shouldn't do as a teen but if

I got caught my reaction would have been to run or give up, not assault the guy that caught me.

Do tell. What did Michael Brown do 5 minutes before he got shot?

[decocker 7,198]

Put another way, if countless people believe in the myth of the thuggish Trayvon and the dangerous Mike, it’s because they have to—without the monsters, their worldview couldn’t stand.

damn, i wanted to standup and clap after this.

[rlogan 2,036]

Congratulations OP, well done.

There's on the order of fifteen thousand homicides a year in the U.S. and for the dunderheads the media tells us which of the ones they sensationalize most are "worthy". Little rich blondie kidnapped by sexual sadist - that's going to clear the media decks 24/7 even if WWIII is underway.

Movie star, political figure, oh yes and anything we can frame as a racial issue. That's top TV ratings too. Put them both together, like movie star and race and it's... The OJ Simpson Trial! Trial of the century. One shows one's self as more of a media groupie than a serious student of race relations to be led around by the nose like this. For what you consider to be indicators of race relations in the US.

This was a jury trial. I was not on the jury. I do not have an obligation to pay attention to what the media hypes as the ones I need to watch. I did not watch the OJ Simpson trial either. Nor that woman in Florida that supposedly killed her own daughter. In terms of race relations in this country there are far better indicators or meaningful data sources for it as opposed to this one homicide in 15,000 or whatever it was. Oh dear me - the media hyped up versions of both men? My goodness - who would ever expect that out of the media?

[decocker 7,198]

I did stuff I shouldn't do as a teen but if I got caught my reaction would have been to run or give up, not assault the guy that caught me.

you don't know what you would have done if you were someone else growing up. it's really silly to speak like you know how you'd react in all situations.

[Karee 4,190]

Do tell. What did Michael Brown do 5 minutes before he got shot?

For someone who seems to be such an aficionado of recordings, I find it hard to believe you haven't seen the video tape of the guy assaulting the store clerk half his size as he was allegedly stealing. Of course that doesn't fit your narrative, so I'm not surprised you're playing dumb.

[Dan and Judy 614]

Do tell. What did Michael Brown do 5 minutes before he got shot?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

For someone who seems to be such an aficionado of recordings, I find it hard to believe you haven't seen the video tape of the guy assaulting the store clerk half his size as he was allegedly stealing. Of course that doesn't fit your narrative, so I'm not surprised you're playing dumb.

Too bad that it has been reported broadly that the convenience store episode is not what caused his deadly encounter with police. The police has made that very clear.

And that has what to do with his encounter with the police that got him killed? That's right, according to the police, nothing. Not a thing.

[Rob L 3,811]

For someone who seems to be such an aficionado of recordings, I find it hard to believe you haven't seen the video tape of the guy assaulting the store clerk half his size as he was allegedly stealing. Of course that doesn't fit your narrative, so I'm not surprised you're playing dumb.

The video of a strong armed robbery , if it is of Michael Brown, shows a disturbing picture.

The problem as it relates to the shooting is that the actions of the officer is unrelated to the theft as the officer had no knowledge of this activity ( confirmed by statements from the police chief of Ferguson . So whatever caused the officer to shoot this young man, it was not influenced by the earlier events.

[Dan and Judy 614]

you don't know what you would have done if you were someone else growing up. it's really silly to speak like you know how you'd react in all situations.

It's silly of you to even bring up the subject of what I would do if I were someone else cuz I ain't.

[Karee 4,190]

The video of a strong armed robbery , if it is of Michael Brown, shows a disturbing picture.

The problem as it relates to the shooting is that the actions of the officer is unrelated to the theft as the officer had no knowledge of this activity ( confirmed by statements from the police chief of Ferguson . So whatever caused the officer to shoot this young man, it was not influenced by the earlier events.

Yeah, I know that. A previous poster was referring to "what a great guy" he was for strong arming a store clerk. Also, MBD asked what he did 5 minutes before he got shot (even though he already knew the answer)

Too bad that it has been reported broadly that the convenience store episode is not what caused his deadly encounter with police. The police has made that very clear.

I never claimed that it did. Your reading comprehension is failing you again.

[decocker 7,198]

It's silly of you to even bring up the subject of what I would do if I were someone else cuz I ain't.

the point is if you weren't yourself then, you don't know someone else now.

[Dan and Judy 614]

Too bad that it has been reported broadly that the convenience store episode is not what caused his deadly encounter with police. The police has made that very clear.

And that has what to do with his encounter with the police that got him killed? That's right, according to the police, nothing. Not a thing.

According to the title of the thread, it's about smearing the reputation of the guy that got shot. It's not really about whether or not the guy should have been shot. I say the video demonstrates clearly the character of the "victim"

the point is if you weren't yourself then, you don't know someone else now.

I was myself then, Have you been drinking?

[decocker 7,198]

I say the video demonstrates clearly the character of the "victim"

this to me, is evidence of too much tv. that clip isn't worthy of defining anyone's character. but good for an episode of law & order, something borderline cheesy.

I was myself then, Have you been drinking?

no, i was being absurd.