“Peaceful protest.” I heard and read those words over and over recently. At first blush, those words just describe what happened: the protests were peaceful. We may have published those words in this newspaper. But, something kept gnawing at me the more I heard it.
I realized why the phrase “peaceful protest” irked me so much is it’s reserved for Black people. I couldn’t recall the phrase being used so ubiquitously a few weeks ago when white Americans were demanding government officials reopen the economy. Even when protesters were armed, news anchors and reporters didn’t emphasize the events were peaceful as much as they do when the protesters are majority Black.
One could say the emphasis is happening because many of the protests turned violent so journalists are simply trying to let the public know the rally was peaceful. That’s true on the surface, but I also know it’s coded language. Black people are violent so not erupting in violence is a surprise. Some think they’re being benevolent by letting Americans know we do know how to behave so don’t be afraid.
It’s expected that we’ll loot and destroy property. I watched a video of a white woman clearly looting and the white woman newscaster had the audacity to wonder if the woman was an employee. Really, lady! If the looter was Black, we know she wouldn’t even utter those words.
And that brings me to my point: racism exists in journalism. Stereotypically, journalists tend to be liberals who are above trotting out tired tropes about Black people. We know that’s a lie. As Dr. King pointed out, the polite racism of white liberals is still racism. I’d venture to say even conservative journalists would say they’re not racist since pretty much most of white America refuses to acknowledge racism exists.
We see it in the way Black people are covered in the news. I can’t even say my white colleagues don’t realize how much they contribute to the narrative of the scary Black man, Black people as criminals or any other stereotypes about Black people. It’s 2020 and this has been pointed out many times over, yet it still happens.
I’m forced to believe, like much of white America (and George Bush), many white journalists don’t care about Black people. We’ve pointed out the almost nonexistent coverage of Black women who are missing while we are inundated with almost nonstop coverage when a white woman is missing. We’ve pointed it out when they automatically run with the narrative from the police even when journalists are taught to question everyone — including your mother. We’ve pointed it out when they turn the Black victim into the criminal. We’ve pointed it out when white women accuse Black men of crimes. Many refuse to listen.
I remember a conversation with a former colleague who I know considers himself to be a pretty liberal guy, and he is. Somehow we got on the subject of race and how he had Black friends because many of his regular sources were Black and he liked them. I told him they weren’t friends and asked had he ever been to their home or vice versa? Did their children play together? Did they go out to dinner together? Talk outside of work or have a conversation that wasn’t transactional? You know, things friends do. When he said he’d done none of those things, I told him he wasn’t friends with any of those Black people and he didn’t know those people. Their relationship was professional. He was offended. I didn’t care. His surface-level relationship with Black people convinced him he had true friendships.
I thought about this conversation as I watched coverage about the protests. The idea that Black people were looting, shooting and destroying was a foregone conclusion. We had to provide examples otherwise.
You’d think people who are tasked with being unbiased would recognize their bias and work to correct it. For some that is the case. Others are purposely obtuse. As a Black woman journalist I’m tired of watching journalists do mental gymnastics to give white people the benefit of the doubt but are too lazy to do so for Black people. It’s time to do better.
