Saturday Edition
Five Dead Niggers vs. Eleven Uttered Niggers: A Racial Scorecard
by Mark Anthony Neal
One index of contemporary race politics in the United States is the recent arrest of accused Israeli serial killer Elias Abuelazam and Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s on-air utterings of the word “nigger.” On their own merit, the Abuelazam arrest, in which he is accused of stabbing thirteen men, five of them fatally, and virtually all of them Black, should easily trump the meltdown of yet another way-too visible, highly compensated so-called celebrity. But such is not the case; while Schlessinger’s rant has been the talk of the chattering class on faux news programs and the blogosphere, even eliciting an apology by Schlessinger herself, the Abuelazam case has been buried in newspaper accounts, as Tom Socca points out in his smart piece “How Many Black Men Do You Have to Murder to Make the Front Page of the New York Times?” At the crux of the media’s seeming disconnect is the reality that eleven uttered “niggers” are a better news story than five dead “niggers.”
The mainstream corporate media’s gravitation to the Schlessinger story, might be excused if it actually forwarded an honest and critical conversation about race—or rather Black/White relations—but a cursory listen to the Schlessinger broadcast, which has gone viral, is a quick reminder of that impossibility. Weeks after the Shirley Sherrod controversy, in which commentators collectively missed an opportunity to illuminate the realities of racial terror and violence for the Youtube generation, Schlessinger’s comparison of the racist sentiments felt by a black women caller involved in an interracial marriage, to the routines of “black comedians” on HBO is juvenile.
That mainstream media felt compelled to cover a story, that should have been outright dismissed as pure folly, only highlights how childlike mainstream corporate media’s coverage of race politics have been. At this point we shouldn’t expect anymore from an institution that has devoted a summer long vigil for a drug-addicted B-list, former child actor, who happened to spend a few days in jail for driving under the influence.
In the case of Abuelazam, the mainstream media is often reticent to claim racist intent, in the face of attacks that seem evidently racially motivated; no doubt this contributes to their unwillingness to highlight a story in which the vast majority of the victims are Black. Thus the Abuelazam case, which focuses on a series of murders over the past four months in Flint, MI (arguably ground zero for the current financial crisis), like a similar case involving a series of murders of Black women in Rocky Mount, NC last year has flown way below the radar.
Giving mainstream corporate media some benefit of the doubt that they want to get the story right—indeed Abuelazam own mysterious racial identity complicates this—the darker explanation of their coverage is the fact that their core audiences could really care less about the death of a bunch of niggers, whether they be the men in Flint, Michigan, the too many black women victims of domestic violence (often at the hands of men who look just like them) or even the world’s most popular basketball player being burned in effigy in Cleveland.
Five Dead Niggers vs. Eleven Uttered Niggers: A Racial Scorecard
by Mark Anthony Neal
One index of contemporary race politics in the United States is the recent arrest of accused Israeli serial killer Elias Abuelazam and Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s on-air utterings of the word “nigger.” On their own merit, the Abuelazam arrest, in which he is accused of stabbing thirteen men, five of them fatally, and virtually all of them Black, should easily trump the meltdown of yet another way-too visible, highly compensated so-called celebrity. But such is not the case; while Schlessinger’s rant has been the talk of the chattering class on faux news programs and the blogosphere, even eliciting an apology by Schlessinger herself, the Abuelazam case has been buried in newspaper accounts, as Tom Socca points out in his smart piece “How Many Black Men Do You Have to Murder to Make the Front Page of the New York Times?” At the crux of the media’s seeming disconnect is the reality that eleven uttered “niggers” are a better news story than five dead “niggers.”
The mainstream corporate media’s gravitation to the Schlessinger story, might be excused if it actually forwarded an honest and critical conversation about race—or rather Black/White relations—but a cursory listen to the Schlessinger broadcast, which has gone viral, is a quick reminder of that impossibility. Weeks after the Shirley Sherrod controversy, in which commentators collectively missed an opportunity to illuminate the realities of racial terror and violence for the Youtube generation, Schlessinger’s comparison of the racist sentiments felt by a black women caller involved in an interracial marriage, to the routines of “black comedians” on HBO is juvenile.
That mainstream media felt compelled to cover a story, that should have been outright dismissed as pure folly, only highlights how childlike mainstream corporate media’s coverage of race politics have been. At this point we shouldn’t expect anymore from an institution that has devoted a summer long vigil for a drug-addicted B-list, former child actor, who happened to spend a few days in jail for driving under the influence.
In the case of Abuelazam, the mainstream media is often reticent to claim racist intent, in the face of attacks that seem evidently racially motivated; no doubt this contributes to their unwillingness to highlight a story in which the vast majority of the victims are Black. Thus the Abuelazam case, which focuses on a series of murders over the past four months in Flint, MI (arguably ground zero for the current financial crisis), like a similar case involving a series of murders of Black women in Rocky Mount, NC last year has flown way below the radar.
Giving mainstream corporate media some benefit of the doubt that they want to get the story right—indeed Abuelazam own mysterious racial identity complicates this—the darker explanation of their coverage is the fact that their core audiences could really care less about the death of a bunch of niggers, whether they be the men in Flint, Michigan, the too many black women victims of domestic violence (often at the hands of men who look just like them) or even the world’s most popular basketball player being burned in effigy in Cleveland.
No comments:
Post a Comment