(Todd A. Smith)
It is amazing how so many people claim that they are colorblind or do not have any prejudice, bigotry or racism in them.
After all, they have friends of other races so how can they actually be racist?
But somehow and someway, many of these non-bigoted and non-prejudice people seem to show their bigotry and prejudice when push comes to shove.
Internal bigotry seems to always rear its ugly head within mainstream media.
When George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, many White people brought up the fact that the teenager smoked marijuana and had gotten suspended from school, as if to justify the killing.
Likewise, when former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger killed Botham Jean while he sat in his own apartment in his underwear eating ice cream, some White people brought up the fact that he smoked that reefer too.
But when a White person allegedly murders innocent people in a mass shooting, it seems that mainstream media tries to humanize the alleged murderer.
This week, a meme began circulating throughout Black social media that showed two distinctly different headlines from conservative tabloid The New York Post.
When Zimmerman killed Martin, the headline in The New York Post read, “Trayvon Martin had traces of marijuana in system at time of death, autopsy reveals.”
However, The New York Post struck a different tone with their headline after a Louisville, Ky. bank employee allegedly went on a murderous rampage at his place of employment on Monday.
The New York Post headline reads, “Louisville shooter Connor Sturgeon was star athlete but suffered ‘multiple concussions.’”
The Post tried to sully a “murder” victim’s reputation with information about his marijuana use when he died.
What makes that even uglier is the fact that Martin was just a teenager, a child.
But when a grown White man allegedly murders innocent people, it is because of his concussions.
Other White mass killers have had other mental conditions used by the press to explain their behavior.
While concussions are a real issue, I do not believe there is much of a correlation between concussions and murder.
As a matter of fact, one of my childhood best friends Jehiel Lewis had his college basketball career at the United States Naval Academy curtailed because of countless concussions.
But instead of killing innocent people, Lewis simply walked away from basketball, began a career at Enbridge in Houston, got married, bought a house and began raising his young daughter.
However, if my boy Jehiel ever did kill someone, intentionally or unintentionally, I bet The New York Post, Fox News, Washington Times, Newsmax, OAN or other racist and conservative media outlets will not bring up his concussion problems at the service academy.
Truthfully, those right-wing media outlets probably would not even mention his service to our country, or that his little brother followed in his footsteps by attending the Naval Academy too.
Those outlets will probably bring up the fact that he grew up in the Acres Homes neighborhood, a historically low-income African-American community in Houston, with a rough reputation.
They will probably bring up the fight he had with the eighth-grade bully “Shrimp” when Lewis was in sixth grade.
If Lewis ever stole a piece of candy or enjoyed an alcoholic beverage before his 21stbirthday, those media entities would probably quickly jump on the story.
God forbid if he ever got reprimanded on the job.
To many conservative media outlets, those sins would definitely warrant capital punishment for a Black man.
However, for a White man, their sins are often justified by mental illness, getting terminated for a job or their wife sleeping with the Black mailman.
Many will try to justify the murder of innocent Black people, while attempting to justify or explain away the murderous ways of a White person.
If racism does not explain this phenomenon, hit Regal up and explain it because that is the only reasoning that we can come up with.
Do you want another example of how mainstream media, often right-wing outlets, allow bias to impact their news coverage of the African-American/
Unfortunately, the 2020 Summer Olympics got postponed until 2021 because the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the Games finally began, it conflicted with the end of the NBA season.
Because of that, some members of the men’s basketball team like Devin Booker of the Phoenix Suns arrived late because they competed in the NBA Finals that year.
The men’s basketball team, which did not get much practice time before international competition began, lost their first game to France.
Sports fans know how much hatred Team USA received from “patriotic” Americans when they settled for a bronze medal in 2004.
Nevertheless, Team USA rebounded from that early loss and defeated France for the gold medal.
How did those grown men like Draymond Green celebrate their gold medal accomplishment?
Many of them drank an alcoholic beverage owned by LeBron James.
When Fox News posted about the accomplishment, the post said something like Team USA celebrated by drinking alcohol or getting drunk.
Instead of celebrating these proud Americans’ accomplishment, Fox News try to drum up some negativity for the predominantly African-American team.
Do you want more proof of mainstream media bigoty?
Let a woman of color come up missing, and their disappearance might garner local news coverage.
But if an attractive White female goes missing, it is breaking international news, or at least national news.
Biased coverage of people often contributes to bias amongst the viewing public.
Malcolm X once said, “The media’s the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power.”
Unfortunately, the bias of many in the press has led to an extreme abuse of power, which seems to make innocent African-Americans look villainous and White killers look sympathetic.
That sad reality needs to stop immediately.
