“Ferguson Shaping Up to Be a Consciousness-Changing Moment for Whites”
“Columbia University Prof. Fredrick Harris describes “transformative episodes that remake perceptions and force a society to abandon abhorrent practices.” They are consciousness-changing moments: rare occurrences when a vivid experience causes public awareness of a problem to change virtually overnight.
One of them was the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas in October 1991. Until Anita Hill gave her testimony, most men regarded sexual harassment as something of a joke. They thought of it as “flirting.” They failed to comprehend women’s anger and humiliation. Anita Hill’s testimony turned out to be one of those rare moments when public consciousness changed. After Prof. Hill testified about her degrading experiences, sexual harassment was transformed overnight from a joke to a crime.”
I definitely think this is true. Based mostly on like facebook posts, a lot more people are talking about Ferguson than were talking about other recent racist incidents. There are a lot of nuanced articles from a lot of different perspectives, there are a lot of people of different races engaging with things like #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, and there is a lot more commentary on the way the media is covering black victims and racism issues. (btw, I’ve decided the see what it looks like to replace ‘racial’ with ‘racism’ for a while, because I feel like ‘racial’ is often used instead just in order to soften the blow). (Like, I have consciously done that before).
I think the news coverage of the shooting of Michael Brown became this sudden platform for the communication of a lot of things, and for action on a range of things, that had all intersected to create a fatally racist interaction.
