Visual Rhetoric: Assassination of the African American — The Death of Michael Brown
Throughout history, we have watched as our news media has taken a biased standpoint when looking at race. In 1916, the National Geographic created an editorial spread focusing on the Aboriginal Australians detailing their “aboriginal” qualities from what was the “regular” human being. This coverage — which they later apologized for — contained descriptions and narration of a people of a certain color in a racist spotlight; a style of journalism that was normalized due to the decrease in educated people of color working in the public news industry. By not having many different ethnic groups detailing and describing the events and history of another ethnic group, you are left with a biased perspective from that of an oppressive race, as well as an ignorant reporter. In 1916, this isn’t such a serious case as it is today because of the awareness brought towards the effects and evil of racism since this time — race was, and still is, a construct of discrimination used to claim one group of individuals inferior to another.
When this article was written and analyzed later in life, the National Geographic had to apologize for its blatant racist introduction to these people. Currently, it has been deemed acceptable for corporations like this to admit their faults towards presenting race, and take responsibility in their part of the spread of racism, yet this is still something we see in our basic news programming. It’s just not as basic as it used to be. We believed that over time our news outlets would understand their wrongdoings and fix this usage of racial misrepresentation. However, over the course of several decades, it merely disguised itself in rhetorical language and the usage of yellow journalism.
Race representation in the news media has evolved from just the simple storytelling of a certain group of people and acquired a focus on telling factual information about these people — not just presenting what you believe to be true about a group of people based on prejudice assumptions. In 2014, African American man Michael Brown was gunned down in the street by a police officer who believed him to be guilty of a previous crime alerted to him earlier that day — Michael Brown was one of a numerous amount of unarmed black men shot by police in this short time period. Like the shot heard around the world, Michael Brown’s death echoed into houses from states all across the country. With the help of news media circulation, this altercation was previewed at every angle, giving it every chance to be absorbed in fresh perspective from its viewer.
However, in certain sections of the news media Michael Brown’s death was interpreted in light of righteous victory; claiming that Michael Brown was the criminal previously being the search for in a robbery case, and was well within the rights to die by the hands of the police department because of this suspicion. In that very instance, Michael Brown’s innocence was stripped away due to a prejudiced understanding being presented to a susceptible audience — much like the death of Emmit Til dying because of a misunderstanding of race and prejudice against one due to the misrepresentation of others; a justification of murder due to one being “wrong” in the standards of their color. After this incident, a pattern struck and many people felt it was time for them to speak out against this atrocity of racism we allow to live in our society; with this observation, many people felt that the news media played a major role in this promotion of discrimination and that something needed to change. With this outlook, we have noticed that the new media still has a hobby of presenting racist/discriminatory news coverage right under our noses, this time around it is simply camouflaged a bit more in the current programming. To this day, we are not sure if this outlook has changed, but we can see an obvious difference in the coverage after the recent collection of unarmed murders and acts of racism that have surfaced towards our attention in the last four years.
In order to bring this greatly outspoken opinion into a proper argument, I have gathered this analysis is by examining the initial outlook on the situation given by the media; this includes photos focusing on the logistics of the situation. In order to accurately pull my reasonings together, I looked at the specifics of the racial description and how that led to much of the confusion in this particular case — along with this I examined how this connotation immediately prepares the viewer to receive a negative perspective. The media has dealt with situations of portraying African American individuals as evil due to stereotypical detail, ultimately hindering any chance of them gaining possible innocence in the public eye — much like Trayvon Martin being ridiculed for wearing a hoodie as a sign of being “up to no good.”
Moments before the situation with Michael Brown sparked there was an incident report at a nearby gas station where a black man reportedly assaulted the gas clerk and stole a few items along the way out. In this photo above, pulled from a collective screenshot from Fox News, we see a large black man assaulting another man, who we will assume is the gas clerk. This short, yet massive visual of this incident, with the wrong connotation, can lead to multiple negative opinions on the situation — A negative connotation has no true way to be analyzed when represented in a biased news medium, therefore sometimes it is up to the viewer to be skeptical about what they are viewing as negative.
Here we are not glorifying the immediate usage of racism on an incident where it is clearly seen a man committing a crime, however, we must look at how this exact incident has lead to the continuation of racism on murder in society. Especially when looking at the process of circulation and interpretation, we can see where this “brainwashing” style of influence can lead anyone to see a criminal in this situation. By pertaining to a biased opinion and perspective it becomes easier to weed out any information that is against that opinion that would create a whole new perspective. From the more conservative side of the spectrum, Fox News has been known to show a massive distrust in the African American community. Scenes like this become the fuel necessary to include all African Americans in the “all black people are bad” conversation. This negative connotation would allow anyone who supports this medium of news media to believe these exact same ideals.
Much later in the day, Michael Brown is shot by police officers because he matches the description of the said individual above. Here we see the example of racial profiling; this police officer assumes that there may be no other African American men of this stature — excluding Michael Brown — around besides our victim, ultimately letting him believe he has caught the perpetrator. Yet all because of this hasty assumption due to already interpreted knowledge, Michael Brown was killed in response to the incident report. As this happened, however, there began to be some discrepancies with the connection between Michael Brown and the unknown assailant from the gas station.
As a way to divert public importance on the “right or wrong” definition that is whether or not if the police officer should have killed Michael Brown, as constant structure used against every person of color was used to bring the victims of any situation whether there is a public opposition against the police, as a criminal or rebellious individual — or group. Soon the question “Was that really Michael Brown? Or did you just make a mistake?” would come up — also responding to the questioning of police officers using immediate, extreme force on black individuals — at one point possibly hindering the outlook of the American society, but America can never be in the wrong. And so in response to this. Many public figures and news reporters — especially the ones working for Fox News — would decide to turn the public opinion from the possibility of innocence to criticizing everything about Michael Brown’s existence and justifying why he should have been killed. As fast as the question of accurate identification came about, the questions of accurate criminal history overshadowed it like an eclipse.
As a means to stop this “character assassination” from happening, NBC News released an article detailing that the Ferguson police asked the news media not to release the video of alleged Michael Brown robbing a store before his unjustified death as it would be met with the wrong connotations towards the conclusion of the situation. Instead, much of what would be seen is evidence criminalizing Michael Brown in a situation where his own voice has been silenced. Much of this imagery caused the public to perceive Michael Brown in this eyes of a criminal rather than that of a victim gunned down by the racial injustice of the corrupt police system. Instead of looking deeper into already perceived issues, the media took its chance to protect the vision of the American image and tarnish that of the African American man.
In recent events, the public has brought awareness towards this mistreatment of the African American character by the news media through the usage of photos to represent those who have died at the hands of police officers. Since the mistreatment of character by the media during the death of Michael Brown, many people have noticed a trend of damaging photos being released by the news outlets after an African American has died. These photos show a completely different outlook on the victim than what they may truly represent — much similar to the video of Michael Brown’s alleged robbery being circulated the same day he died. This pattern has brought out a discussion amongst certain groups of individuals — Black Twitter and the Right Winged mainstream community of Twitter — to question the true ethics of the representation of these videos.
For starters, the conversation starts at the very basic nature of human morality; much of what the mainstream media will present as a logical standpoint in these situations is the dichotomy of the “good guy” or the “bad guy” and how each should be treated for their actions. Michael Brown’s alleged robbery is an example of the Right Winged mainstream decision to condemn him for his actions and justifying his murder. However, Black Twitter has responded to this argument with greater attention to the morality of the situation; Whatever the crime may be, is it truly ethical to gun down an unarmed criminal in the public eye rather than bringing them in to answer for their crimes in the light of justice? Black Twitter brings forward the examples of how the young white males convicted of mass shootings are never killed on the scene, and they are normally armed — a leading example of this would be the arrest of Dylan Roof versus the murder of Michael Brown.
This ethical questioning of the justification of these murders is backed behind many Black Twitter supporters who have created the hashtag campaign “#IfTheyGunnedMeDown” highlighting the media’s misuse of public representation by showing pictures that would enable African Americans to be held in a negative light — much like pictures of African Americans holding guns or being seen in “ghetto” context — rather than using photos to hold them in a positive light — much like pictures of certain African Americans graduating, or good-hearted photos in general. This is another example of how the news mediums use the image of certain African Americans as a caricature to over exaggerate or hyperbolize their lifestyles in a negative context continuously in our current time period. This isn’t a direct similarity to older, prejudice news reporting but it still holds many of its values in a more “under the scope” aspect of writing.
This is also met with counter-claims of the media using more friendly photos of white people when they commit atrocities such as mass murder. After this pattern is addressed it becomes very visible to see the tactics of the assassination of the African American character and just how often it happens. Black Twitter has often made a count of how many times this has happened for white people in relation to the deaths of black people — and the count continues to this day. There has always been a battle of negative representation of African American’s — or anyone who is not white — in popular news media, and as much as Black Twitter would like to bring awareness to this pattern they too understand that it takes more than just speaking about it to the public. They have since learned that it is more focused on the persuasion of the pattern to the public.
You can only fight the news mediums in this situation so much until you have to start speaking towards the public who watch these mediums. The bias that comes from those who constantly watched these outlets creates an already perceived idea of the nature of the incident without ethically analyzing what is going on. When being apart of a collected group of individuals — such as the followers of a particular news station — you have already given up on the idea of looking at what you are being shown from a different perspective. You already understand that there is a place you go to for information because you believe that information to always be true because of the people who present it. These are news anchors and broadcasters you feel that are looking out for your best interest in public information. However, that may not always be the case when it comes to certain news mediums. As stated before, it becomes hard to weed through some of the more biased opinions of race and race representation when working from a biased standpoint.
It takes much more than just bringing awareness to the situation, many of the viewers must be able to completely understand the views and perspectives of those they are ignorant of. The persuasion of this new perspective the viewers must adapt to comes from the ethical questioning that one must ask themselves when viewing these videos or photographs of African Americans. Black Twitter has often asked many of its enemies to put themselves in the shoes of their victims when deciding whether the life of an African American victim is important. And unfortunately, this can only be done if those viewers do decide to look at their life and the incidents in their life with a new outlook. Pulling a viewer out of their biased opinion will allow them to better understand that their “enemies” are just as human as they are, and deserve the same ethical reasoning over whether or not they should live or die just like the viewer. Without a proper understanding of the “other” perspective, this cycle of misrepresentation will continue for years and years — leaving no end of racism and prejudice in sight for the future generations to come.
In conclusion, as stated in an article — When The Media Treat White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims — written by Nick Wing for The Huffington Post, “Other times, the headlines seem to suggest black victims are to blame for their own deaths, engaging in what critics sometimes allege is a form of character assassination.” as a common method used by the news media to turn black individuals into immediate victims of violence in our country as a means to make excuses for certain insecurities of our society. One way we have seen this happen is through the criminalization of African Americans and the connotations created from the specific message and media portraying them. In order for us to have a better perspective on this connotation, we must understand when the news media is putting this method of perspective. And we must decide for ourselves how to judge the situation; not on ideals already perceived by our reporters, but by ideas inferred from our own knowledge and research on the situation brought to our awareness.