(Akiit.com) The Washington Times quickly yanked the picture of Malia and Sasha Obama juxtaposed with the screaming headline “36 Chicago area kids killed sets record.†Times editor John Solomon blamed it on a computer auto file error. No word from Editor Solomon who or what programmed the computer, and no formal apology either for the slander.
No matter, the Times blunder(?)dumped back on the table the sensitive, troubling, and polarizing issue of and racial stereotyping. And that’s the issue of the blanket typecasting of young blacks, as crime and violence prone no matter who they are. The plague of gang killing and violence and murders in Chicago that stirred the Obama-murder connection has stirred even more vivid, and lurid images of young blacks as lawbreakers.
The relentless media and public tagging of young black males as gangsters hasn’t helped matters. When some young blacks turn to gangs, guns and drugs, and terrorize their communities, much of the press busily titillates the public with inexhaustible features on the “crime prone,” “crack plagued,” “blood stained streets” of the ghetto. TV action news crews routinely stalk black neighborhoods filming busts for the nightly news.
The explosion of gangster rap and the spate of Hollywood ghetto films convinced many Americans that the gang lifestyle is the black lifestyle. They had ghastly visions of the hordes of gang members heading for their neighborhoods next. The overwhelming majority of the victims of gang attacks are blacks, and the violence almost is exclusively confined to battles over drugs and turf control in poor urban neighborhoods. But with public panic over gangs, and with few accurate numbers on just how many urban youth are actually gang members, some police and city officials play fast and loose with the numbers.
In Los Angeles, police claim that more than 700 gangs with 40,000 members ply the streets of the city committing murder and mayhem. Police and city officials have tossed similar colossal figures on gang affiliation around in other big cities, Chicago included.
The Washington Times juxtaposition of the Obama girls with crime and violence, no matter how fleeting, was just another in the long litany of sorry examples of how crime and violence are inextricably woven in the brain cells of far too many with blacks. That is even blacks named Malia and Sasha Obama.
Written By Earl Ofari Hutchinson