Would my daughter be pretty enough?
Well, would she?
I mean, if our daughter was, god forbid, kidnapped, lost or vanished, would the local.. much less the national, news even care? I don’t believe so. You see, she is ‘pretty’ enough, she’s just not ‘white’ enough.
(cross-posted to dailykos, my first diary here… 🙂
You hear a lot about the ‘pretty white girl’ syndrome. Almost all the news of ‘damsels in distress’ in the national and even the local media deal with white damsels in distress, all the while there are thousands of similar, and even more poignant stories of women and girls in trouble.. but those of color. Money has something to do with it, but the overriding commonality of these cases is that they are white (I’ll find you a dozen stories of black women/girls missing who are middle class or higher and never in the news). A LOT has been written about it, but two things struck me the other day, not only is it always about white females.. but it is constant, incessant, all the time news.. and when I did this chart with timeframes when they were in the news.. it really struck home:
These pretty white things are in the national news near constantly in the last 5, 10…. years. I didn’t realize how constantly till I put it in this graph. There is nary a break. The the media coverage on each waxes and wanes, it is constant. The coverage of one pretty white thing is closed (Hacking/Peterson) and another one opens (Holloway/Wilbanks). In fact, its almost as if the national media (CNN/CBS/Fox, etc) have to have three juggling at any one time just in case the news on one wanes.
This crowds out other news like war, economy, politics not to mention the thousands of black, hispanic, asian and other females in trouble. Its as if our national conscience NEEDS news of pretty white damsels in trouble, constantly.
But, as I thought about it some… and then the Jackson trial verdict came over the news while I was sitting in the airport…
I realized there is an near exact correlary…
Evil black men who hurt innocent white things. From O.J. Simpson to Michael Jackson, whether guilty or innocent, we as a nation sit mesmerized on every gory detail. The Media emcamps at the trials and waits breathlessly for every tidbit. It’s interesting I came upon this thought this weekend, when the Senate just passed a resolution apologizing for not making lynching illegal a half century ago but there seems to be a good number of Senators who think it was all right then too (all Republicans)
Because even though we don’t lynch like we did then (you know, in the woods from trees), our society seems to have an appetite for it still… so we just do it vicariously through the media… protecting our pretty young white women and ‘lynching’ our evil black men.
I’m wondering how much we’ve really changed as a people in the last 50-100 years, sometimes I’m proud and hopeful, today I’m embarrassed and discouraged.
and somehow I doubt my daughter would be “pretty” (read “white”) enough.
PS (links to timelines, etc)
See Young African Americans Against Media Stereotypes for some enlightening tidbits (like the fact that almost all black NBA athletes shown with their wives/girlfriends have white wives… while 90% of black NBA athletes have black wives/girlfriends.. why is that?
Shiavo
Holloway
Wilbanks,
Hacking,
Smart,
Ramsey
Peterson,
Jackson,
Bryant
Bryant
